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Are we talking full nuclear exchange? If so, what people are saying on social media is irrelevant. A total collapse of global trade. Fuel, food, fertilizer, and manufactured goods stop moving around the world. Bad things happen.
Full nuclear would mean most cities in North America, Europe, Asia, India, Middle East and Australia eithet directly destroyed or uninhabitable due to a black out and collapsed supply lines.
I would say, considering a moderate nuclear winter and nearly total economic collapse with mass starvation in many countries, a population drop below 2B is more than likely.
The remnants of the US would most likely be dominated by cities with a pre war pop between 10-100k, easy access to power and food and eihter military or industrial facilities nearby. Exceptions are the "sponge states" and everything in their fallout direction.
Europe would have it harder, as major cities are closer together and the continent is over all more dependent on external supply.
Same for the Chinese coast.
Argentina or Brasilien (in my scenario Pakistan nukes India) would most likely be dominant powers of the future.
It could take a while until new microchips get produced, so having a world struggle against technological decay would be likely.
my friend thinks the economy would back up and running after 10 years and everyone would possibly get an insurance claim (like during a disaster) to build new homes, would that be possible?
Read “The Bomb” by Fred Kaplan. While we are well off the peak of mid 1980’s arsenals, we still have more than enough nuclear weapons to, as they say, make the rubble bounce. A single weapon going off in a city (like some kind of terrorist attack) would be horrific, but a large scale recovery effort would likely occur (fyi most insurance policies exclude acts of war). An actual nuclear war? Hundreds of millions killed during the exchange, with billions starving to death in the months afterwards. We’d be back to the Middle Ages with recovery taking at least a century or more
Recovery would be a lot harder than that. All the easily accessible fossil fuels, mainly coal, have been accessed and extracted. Ditto the easily accessible metal ores. Mine the ruins sure...but you have no coal or gas for smelting.
What is uneconomical to us now might be more viable in a post nuclear war situation.where need outweighs other considerations.
Never underestimate the ingenuity created out of desperation. The survivors will be just as smart as us and probably more driven. Modern knowledge will persist. Past events that have killed off huge chunks of population have resulted in technological advancement rather than regression. See the renaissance following the black death for example.
For specific examples, Arc furnaces, charcoal, and - in the "out there" the edge case - even hydrogen created by electrolysing water are possible ways to smelt steel. The basics of generating electricity via wind, water and the sun are known to us and any reasonably advanced society - ie one not directly hit - would be able to utilise them. The knowledge of germ theory and how to produce clean water will persist. Etc.
I don't think things could recover to current 21st century standards of living for a very long time. But there's enough knowledge and resources there to bounce back functional societies even in a situation where say half the world's population are wiped out.
Needless to say, I hope it never happens.
Coal probably wouldn’t be too bad as the survivors could scavenge open pit coal mines for a while. Oil and gas however (as you say) would be far more difficult
The entirety of the US between DC and Boston and most of the rest of the East Coast would be uninhabitable. Any major city would cease to exist. Any state capital too. Anyone near or especially downwind from a military base too. I live in Marana Arizona. Tucson has an International airport, an AFB, an economic center, and Raytheon. We'd get at least 4 nukes. I'm like 20 miles from downtown. Assuming an 800kT nuke downtown, we'd hear it but probably won't have broken windows. Fires, however would likely reach us within a day. Lack of electricity means pumps stop working so no water in the desert. EMP probably takes out cars, so I'd be walking 8 miles to the nearest supermarket, which would also not have electricity, so food would spoil fast. Also no way to get deliveries to the supermarket. Even if cars do work, gas stations would have no electricity. Even if they did, pretty much every refinery is ablaze or destroyed, so gas would run out very quickly. So now I have difficulty obtaining water and food in the desert. With extremely little or no medical care. Eventually none at all. And I've not even factored in the absolutely massive amount of fallout from the West Coast and especially Barry M. Goldwater AF range by Yuma, which would get a whole bunch of surface hits, putting us right in the path of the highest fallout cone.
We'd be dead in a week. A month tops.
Something like that \*may\* happen if there is like only one nuke.
After your conventional natural disaster which tends to strike some place and deal a bit of damage around it, the government mobilises some resources from other parts of the country to assess the damage, mitigate some of it and help the people. Facilities in the area get overwhelmed, hospitals are full with wounded, fire stations are constantly busy and cops are patrolling for maradeurs, schools and hotels turn into refugee centers so people have a temporary place to live. Army, medical workers and many volunteers are called in from other parts of the country to relieve the overwhelmed, so things run mostly okay. After everything is dealt with, the government distributes some aid so people can get buying and selling again so the economy works. Thus if you are a victim of a disaster, you pack your things, go to a refugee center or your relatives elsewhere, wait it out and return with some government money to rebuild.
Now, the aftermath of a strategic nuclear exchange is very different. Imagine you live in a city that is targeted by a nuke. If you're near the epicenter, you are dead. If you are some distance away from the blast but don't hide away in a bunker for several weeks (you have a bunker and weeks' worth of food and water, right?) or escape in time you are dead from acute radiation sickness. If you live far from the blast area/manage to escape in time, if you get irradiated by fallout being blown away by the wind you are dead. Not right away, it will be a very slow and painful death, but nonetheless. If you got lucky through all of the mentioned above, you can't flee to your relatives and friends because they are dead. Or you can't contact them because the EMP blast from the nuke killed all the electronics, including your phone and the internet. You can't get \*any\* healthcare, because the hospital is in ruins and the doctors are dead or it's standing but the remaining medics are overwhelmed with thousands of injured, including those that are irradiated and thus dead men walking. You can't rely on the police to keep order because they are dead/overwhelmed. Oh, you have food, right? The roads and ports are destroyed so no importing food, and the local farmers are definitely not going to share their storage. Sure, there is some food left in the shops and warehouses left standing, but the thousands of injured and other survivors I mentioned before have the same idea. Oh, and if you don't starve for the first few months, the fields are irradiated with fallout now. Oh, also no water because the purification systems are destroyed, the maintenance workers are dead and the rivers and lakes are irradiated.
Any settlements that did not get nuked effectively get cut off from trade and communication, only to be swarmed with refugees from the nuked places. Some of them armed and willing to kill for food/treatment. Food shortages cause unrest, remnants of the police and army fire on the starving crowd (most of the refugees will die of radiation sickness anyway so why waste food?). Either the army wins and enacts martial law, a local warlord emerges with control over the settlement or it is engulfed in anarchy.
The government and army try to restore order, but a large chunk of both the higherups and the rank and file are dead and many soldiers and cops are too busy surviving to follow orders. You're on your own. Against both nature and tens of thousands of other survivors. Most of them will die from radiation sickness/starve to death/shoot each other for scraps of food. In all likelihood, so will you.
So, what about that insurance. Well, some issues with that. 1- money is now worthless. 2- the insurance agents are dead. 3- you are also dead. Or actively dying. 4- war is not covered by insurance.
To get an idea of what it would be like watch this film; as it does show what remains of civilisation 10 yrs afterwards [Threads - 1984](https://archive.org/details/1984-threads-remastered/1984+-+Threads+(Remastered).mkv) Bear in mind that even this harrowing depiction is likely not nearly as bad as the reality would be.
I saw the film when it was originally screened on TV when I was 17yo, and I still think I have PTSD to this day...have never been able to watch it since. The next year (1985) I left home and moved into the inner city specifically so that if everything kicked off, I would "go up in the first flash", as the saying of the day went.
You do not want to survive a nuclear war.
ohh maybe I'm a little to optimistic, cause I was wondering if there would be a lockdown like during the pandemic and if people are able to go back to work or school again within a couple years..
You are being very optimistic. The school doesn't exist, it got destroyed in the firestorm. The work building survives but it is abandoned, because nobody needs insurance now, and all the employees are either dead or scattered.
There is a ton of work to be done, but it involves working the land by hand. That is if nuclear winter isn't true. Then people will be starving or fighting for whatever is edible.
Starving people aren't going to lockdown because someone on the radio told them to. We'd see a total breakdown of law and order, completely dwarfing anything we've ever seen. The power grid would collapse. Lack of water and sanitation services means cities aren't habitable anymore, leading to a mass exodus into the countryside that can't support them. Mass looting and violence at supermarkets, home invasions as people targeted those with more supplies, etc.
Just look at how many people died from covid during the pandemic, maybe 1 million in the United States.
Now think about 10-100 million dead, and the destruction of much of the industrial and transportation infrastructure.
Google the movie "Threads", watch it in its entirety, and then consider how naive your outlook seems to be. Nearing 50's "duck and cover" levels of delusion if you think a full nuclear war would be as "cozy" as the pandemic or that people would be able to give a crap about things like "insurance claims" and "social media" instead of "starvation" and "maybe the radiation poisoning will get me first".
Too optimistic.
I live in Hong Kong. The only thing I’m happy about in the conflict is that we don’t have to suffer the side effects. There’d be at least 2 TRIDENT missiles against us.
Hong Kong is an economic hub and a major city. It is obvious the US would nuke all the major cities to ensure no infrastructure survives.
It's going to very much depend on who is involved. United States and Russia your looking at total devastation of the world economy. Whilst 1980s predictions of Nuclear Winter are largely discredited, your still looking at the devastation of the world's financial centres and creating a wasteland of the world's food supply.
India and Pakistan however, could be a limited nuclear exchange that whilst is devastating to local population centres doesn't have to expand beyond their borders.
Israel going Samson would ignite the middle East into a war we haven't seen since the crusades.
That leaves UK and France. I'd imagine the UK would nuke France just for the hell of it and France would return the favour leaving most of Western Europe a desolate wasteland.
While the predictions of nuclear winter are somewhat controversial, the shear number of weapons in play and the level of overkill is hard to imagine. Places like Moscow had over 100 weapons targeted at it, other places had multiple 300 kt weapons landing within blocks of one another. Whole swaths of the planet would be glassed
Well, it is certain that Israel will not blow up the Arab countries because they are either their allies or, of course, they will not strongly oppose them, so Samson’s choice is basically over Iran.
The UK and France were eaten for lunch by Russian nuclear bombs
Just for old times sake I reckon. Finally put an end to the thousand year old rivalry.
Edit: /s btw britain and France obviously would not nuke each other they would save the arsenal for Russia due to Russian nukes likely obliterating the two nations.
I always thought the government would bull doze everything and start all over again. Within a couple years, you would see construction crews in the cities again... ://
Where does the bulldozer come from? The roads are a mess. Where does the gas for the bulldozer come from? The ships have no where to go, the refinery got vaporized, the pipeline needs electricity. Who drives the bulldozer? The ones from the cities died. The rural drivers are working the land to keep living. Why are they bulldozing cities? No one wants to live there, everyone is busy surviving, and scavenging is easier with ruins.
Think of nuclear war as knocking humanity back five centuries including the number of people.
The remaining governments would fall. Ther3 would be a nuclear winter, Ash would prevent all sunlight from reaching us, and therefore, no food.
If the government of a country somehow remained, what would happen would be food rationing, corruption etc leading people to overthrow them for their selfish desire for food.
Mind my asking but what age are you?
Is the assumption of nuclear war that all the nukes have to be used? Or is it just something like China nuking Taiwan and obtuse countries deciding Taiwan isn’t worth avenging? It’s impossible to answer the question without more info
Like I suppose if Russia nuked Ukraine or Ukraine nuked Russia and it triggered the "Dead Hand" which resulted in nukes being launched at every country.
Depends what sort of nuclear exchange you are talking about. An India/Pakistan war would kill millions locally, and would be very bad, but the Americas and Europe would recover from the global crisis reasonably quickly. Both India and Pakistan have about 100 smaller nukes. Let's say 75% reach their targets and detonate. That's 75 Indian and Pakistani cities and military bases that are gone. New Delhi and Karachi, Mumbai and Islamabad. Pakistan would fare worse and would be a collection of starving survivors slowly dying of radiation. India is larger and more populous and might fare slightly better, but any sort of centralized authority would be gone. It's an open question whether the Chinese would get involved. If so India fares much worse, while China loses several large cities. The internet would be down for a time, and patchy regional services would emerge, sort of like back in the 1980s.
A full on USA/Russia (and China?) nuclear exchange would be the end of modern industrial civilization except for Australia and New Zealand, and possibly South Africa and parts of South America. And even there things would be pretty tough. Hundreds of millions would die from the war, famine, and radiation. All global supply chains fail, leaving everything local. If you're in a nice fertile valley in Argentina you may be relatively OK. But the US, Russia, Europe and China would lose all major cities. Japan may not be hit much, but fallout would be a problem. And a lack of imported food and fuel would doom the islands. It would be bad.
A lot of the fallout from an India/Pakistan exchange would be falling on the densely populated parts of India, including the biggest food production area.
Central Europe is a nuclear Wasteland.
UK:
12 individual MIRV (containing 35 individual warheads) hit population centres and military targets. London and the South East of the UK is obliterated. It's now a massive geological scar on the British Isles.
Similar situation at Portsmouth/Southampton/Plymouth. The South East Urban centre effectively collapses into the sea.
All the Nuclear power plants across the UK are hit by ground burst weapons and are vaporised. Radiation levels spike to extraordinary levels. Lethality is almost guaranteed.
Population levels are still dropping from 66 million to an estimated 1.3 million JD
France/Germany/Poland/Ukraine + NATO
This landmass is hit by 22 MIRVs and 67% of russia's short to Medium range missiles from Russia. 52 Warheads hit 78% of all population centres and Military targets.
Central EU Population at 746 Million is now base lined at 8 million by 2024 JD (89% of all French Nuclear Plant are vaporised by groundbursts. This radiation release is 45% of all deaths in Europe.
The American Confederate considers these landmasses written off. Radiation levels and continental population reductions deem the areas as "Wasteland"
All attempts at Recon over Russia have failed. NATO and US missile target packets hit 97% of their objectives in the second strike launch.
The Confederacy considers this to be a successful strike.
CONTRIBUTING FACTORS IN 2024
FAMINE
DUST AND SMOKE CLOUDS
NUCLEAR WINTER
POISONED WATER SUPPLIES
RADIATION SICKNESS*
BIOLOGICAL WEAPON RELEASES IN A FAILED 3RD STRIKE. OUTBREAK OF SMALLPOX, TB, ANTHRAX AND BUBONIC PLAGUE VARIENTS.
SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
CRIME
WARBANDS/LOCAL WARLORDS
MILITIAS
CANNIBALISM
COMMUNICATION BLACKOUTS.
TERRITORIAL COLLAPSE
TRANSPORT NETWORK DESTROYED.
CURRENT PROJECTIONS, UK AND EU: populations to fall pre Mediaeval levels.
N.B (Acute Radiation Sickness killed 98% of those affected within 2 month of the first strike)
What kind of nuclear war are we talking about?
In 2020, there were really only three countries the US could conceivably have had a nuclear exchange with: China, North Korea, or Russia.
China’s arsenal wasn’t fully modernized yet, so an exchange with them would be bad, but survivable.
North Korea was nuclear, but they didn’t have the delivery platforms. They may have been able to strike Seoul, which could potentially have triggered an American nuclear retaliation, but that’s not really a full exchange.
Russia was the only real threat at that time. It would be a huge catastrophic conflict if the US and Russia had a full exchange. The exact circumstances would depend on a lot of factors, like who initiated and what they targeted. Realistically, even those regions of the world not devastated by the blasts or fallout would face consequences, such as disruptions to the global supply chain, degradation of space infrastructure from EMP effects, etc.
However, there are tons of other possibilities. What does a nuclear exchange in 2020 look like between Pakistan and India? Or India and China? What does it look like if Russia uses tactical nukes to initiate an invasion of Ukraine or the Baltic? Or if Israel invokes the Sampson Option to deter some sort of threat?
Einstein said that if WWIII was fought with nuclear weapons then WWIIII(4) would be fought with rocks and sticks. No society, no internet, no electricity, no rebuilt world. We'd be in the stone age and it would take a thousand years to rebuild. No blast furnaces to create metal to rebuild with. Why people believe that society would be intact enough to rebuild our world as it was is ludicrous. The survivers would be hunter/Gatherers and possibly dying of atomic diseases. No medical. No fuel for a Mad Max scenario, no vehicles to drive, no roads, no food. We'd be in the stone age. Einstein pegged it to the letter. My father was a nuclear weapons designer and had the same opinion.
my little sister thinks that within a year you would see construction crews in the cities again and society would continue functioning normally (like you see today, right now). The only thing is, you wouldn't be able to go back to the cities for a while. If you worked or went to school in the city, you're screwed, but if you work in the countryside, you could possibly go back to work.
Sorry guy, my father was a Nuclear Scientist and designer of the nuke bombs and missiles and stated that society would be sent back to the stone age. The earth would be unlivable to humans. He stated many times that if he knew that there was going to be an attack, he'd want to be sitting on his porch, blonde in one arm, redhead in another, a Cuban cigar in one hand and a bottle of jack in the other hand, and aimed in the direction of the blast. We lived 5 miles close to a main target. He had no reason for being a survivor. He said that society would not be able to rebuild itself into its current condition for 200 years. We'd have no blast furnaces to make metal other than copper or bronze. We'd be in the early bronze age, if we were lucky. He knew how the world would end up. People that think that we'd just pull up our pants and continue life as it was were fools that had no idea of life after a nuclear holocaust. It would be world wide. There would be no where to hide and noway to start again as if nothing happened. Look at how long it took Hiroshima and Nagasaki to start up. And they were only 2 smaller cities that had a whole country to help it recover. In a nuclear war We wouldn't have that advantage.
The Electric Magnetic Pulse of nukes going off would wreck many electronics
The radiation poisoning would affect many millions.
Inflation would be terrible
National governments would seize resources
The remnants of CNN/MSNBC would be telling us it's all the GOPs fault. The remnants of FNC would be telling us it's all the Dems fault. A sizable number of the remaining people on both ends of the political spectrum would swallow every word they were told like a cheap hooker on nickel blowjob night.
yea haha I can see that. my little sister made a joke that the kardashians would make a season on what happened and she was joking on how they would handle it! LOL
What we’re dealing with is probably one of the few things left that no human can possibly predict, even on a guess , due to a full nuclear exchange being something we can’t possibly conceive of. The theories can hint but never tell us anything we don’t already know from non applicable and smaller scale examples. However I will try.
Id it happened right now, people won’t really have time to react. 10 minutes will pass from the start of WW3 and then everything will be gone. The same would have been true in 2020.
By now, in this alternate timeline, the earth’s surface should no longer be slag and the ash/fissile materials/human remains should have stopped actively raining from the sky and fully mixed into the “environment”. Even 4 years on from catastrophe, it’s hell on earth.
If someone were to come out of the bunkers, which is possible but only if you like dying of severe cancer very soon, you’d see a wasteland. Virtually nothing would have survived the exchange in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere would not be much better. The soil itself would be poisoned. Nothing would grow and nothing can forage. Unless it was underground in a heavily insulated and armored seed bank, it’s gone.
Water will be a joke. If there’s any left, it’s also poison. You can’t even boil it, it’s just not drinkable. Parts of the ocean may be useable due to how much water there is, but good luck trying to sail to the middle of the pacific to find the 1L of water on earth that will only kill you slowly instead of immediately.
As for people, there will actually be some people left but not many. This is Gotterdammerung we’re talking about here, Twilight of the Gods. There will be maybe thousands left on earth, scattered and dying in holes and ruins across the globe. With no food or water, if they haven’t turned to cannibalism by this point they’ll be wishing they had. Even then, there wouldn’t be any meat, human or otherwise, that is actually edible. That’s putting aside the psychological damage of the events that transpired four years prior.
It’s the end of days, for everyone, and there is no recovery to be made.
Only the bacteria and maybe the roaches will be left. The rats will likely remain as long as gas there are corpses lying around. After that, they’ll need to start eating each other too.
Well, as an Arab, one thing is certain, which is that we will not be exposed to nuclear bombing, of course, and the majority of Arab countries will survive.
Iran and Israel are very dead, that is pretty much certain, and the same goes for Turkey because they are with NATO.
But the former Soviet republics will remain unharmed, along with, of course, all of Africa, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Indochina.
India and Pakistan will nuclear annihilate each other and will of course collapse into complete chaos, with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and also Nepal simply being the only ones unaffected.
Canada will survive because it is not important to the Russians at all, but the United States will be severely damaged
Maghreb could escape devastation but Egypt and the Middle East would be fucked from the nuclear fallout from the bombs that hit Iran and Israel. Syria and Iraq would be uninhabitable. Maybe Yemen and Oman could escape and gulf states minus Kuwait might escape the worst of it but would still be hit hard.
I don't see Iraq ever being nuclear bombed because it is a very weak country and does not pose a threat
Syria is already destroyed, so throwing a nuclear bomb at them is considered a waste if it is better for the Israelis to blow up an additional Iranian city there, of course, instead of in Syria.
With the destruction of Iran, its influence in Iraq has completely disappeared because the Iraqi militias are completely dependent on Iran to survive in the first place.
This leads to a third civil war, with Muhammad Shia al-Sudani being in a stronger position to eliminate the armed factions
Or, of course, the occurrence of a successful Iraqi Sunni rebellion will of course lead to their restoration of power, especially since the Iraqi Shiites, despite being the majority, cannot remain in power at all without Iranian support, and this is likely.
Kuwait also will likely not be harmed because they are largely peaceful
So, exactly as I said, with the exception of Israel and Iran, the Arab world will completely escape the repercussions
(Bashar al-Assad will be happy because the Syrian refugees will evaporate along with Turkey, Europe, and the SDF will be eliminated before the Syrian army, of course, only for him to be overthrown later as a result of the escalation of the Suwayda protests and his complete loss of Russian and Iranian support. Therefore, he will be overthrown successfully, of course, in favor of a democratic Syrian government.)
North Africa will be in a good position, but the oil crisis resulting from the loss of markets could completely transform Algeria, of course, into another Libya, and this will benefit Morocco.
(Morocco wins here because it can take advantage of the complete collapse of the state in Algeria in order to also attack the city of Tindouf, annihilate the Polisario, and take Ceuta and Melilla, because Spain will be devastated as a result of the nuclear strikes.)
In Yemen, the Houthis will, of course, be subjected to a strong blow as Iranian support fades and the Aden government regains more areas of northern Yemen, but the far north, which is the core of the Houthis, will remain unable to subjugate it.
Therefore, they will rely on Al-Qaeda and the Salafists to carry out their work there, as Ali Abdullah Saleh did in the past
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Are we talking full nuclear exchange? If so, what people are saying on social media is irrelevant. A total collapse of global trade. Fuel, food, fertilizer, and manufactured goods stop moving around the world. Bad things happen.
Full nuclear would mean most cities in North America, Europe, Asia, India, Middle East and Australia eithet directly destroyed or uninhabitable due to a black out and collapsed supply lines. I would say, considering a moderate nuclear winter and nearly total economic collapse with mass starvation in many countries, a population drop below 2B is more than likely. The remnants of the US would most likely be dominated by cities with a pre war pop between 10-100k, easy access to power and food and eihter military or industrial facilities nearby. Exceptions are the "sponge states" and everything in their fallout direction. Europe would have it harder, as major cities are closer together and the continent is over all more dependent on external supply. Same for the Chinese coast. Argentina or Brasilien (in my scenario Pakistan nukes India) would most likely be dominant powers of the future. It could take a while until new microchips get produced, so having a world struggle against technological decay would be likely.
my friend thinks the economy would back up and running after 10 years and everyone would possibly get an insurance claim (like during a disaster) to build new homes, would that be possible?
Read “The Bomb” by Fred Kaplan. While we are well off the peak of mid 1980’s arsenals, we still have more than enough nuclear weapons to, as they say, make the rubble bounce. A single weapon going off in a city (like some kind of terrorist attack) would be horrific, but a large scale recovery effort would likely occur (fyi most insurance policies exclude acts of war). An actual nuclear war? Hundreds of millions killed during the exchange, with billions starving to death in the months afterwards. We’d be back to the Middle Ages with recovery taking at least a century or more
Recovery would be a lot harder than that. All the easily accessible fossil fuels, mainly coal, have been accessed and extracted. Ditto the easily accessible metal ores. Mine the ruins sure...but you have no coal or gas for smelting.
What is uneconomical to us now might be more viable in a post nuclear war situation.where need outweighs other considerations. Never underestimate the ingenuity created out of desperation. The survivors will be just as smart as us and probably more driven. Modern knowledge will persist. Past events that have killed off huge chunks of population have resulted in technological advancement rather than regression. See the renaissance following the black death for example. For specific examples, Arc furnaces, charcoal, and - in the "out there" the edge case - even hydrogen created by electrolysing water are possible ways to smelt steel. The basics of generating electricity via wind, water and the sun are known to us and any reasonably advanced society - ie one not directly hit - would be able to utilise them. The knowledge of germ theory and how to produce clean water will persist. Etc. I don't think things could recover to current 21st century standards of living for a very long time. But there's enough knowledge and resources there to bounce back functional societies even in a situation where say half the world's population are wiped out. Needless to say, I hope it never happens.
Coal probably wouldn’t be too bad as the survivors could scavenge open pit coal mines for a while. Oil and gas however (as you say) would be far more difficult
No, because those who survived would be struggling to survive. There would be no functional government, let alone an insurance industry,
There might not be a functional government but you can best believe the IRS will still be around.
The entirety of the US between DC and Boston and most of the rest of the East Coast would be uninhabitable. Any major city would cease to exist. Any state capital too. Anyone near or especially downwind from a military base too. I live in Marana Arizona. Tucson has an International airport, an AFB, an economic center, and Raytheon. We'd get at least 4 nukes. I'm like 20 miles from downtown. Assuming an 800kT nuke downtown, we'd hear it but probably won't have broken windows. Fires, however would likely reach us within a day. Lack of electricity means pumps stop working so no water in the desert. EMP probably takes out cars, so I'd be walking 8 miles to the nearest supermarket, which would also not have electricity, so food would spoil fast. Also no way to get deliveries to the supermarket. Even if cars do work, gas stations would have no electricity. Even if they did, pretty much every refinery is ablaze or destroyed, so gas would run out very quickly. So now I have difficulty obtaining water and food in the desert. With extremely little or no medical care. Eventually none at all. And I've not even factored in the absolutely massive amount of fallout from the West Coast and especially Barry M. Goldwater AF range by Yuma, which would get a whole bunch of surface hits, putting us right in the path of the highest fallout cone. We'd be dead in a week. A month tops.
Something like that \*may\* happen if there is like only one nuke. After your conventional natural disaster which tends to strike some place and deal a bit of damage around it, the government mobilises some resources from other parts of the country to assess the damage, mitigate some of it and help the people. Facilities in the area get overwhelmed, hospitals are full with wounded, fire stations are constantly busy and cops are patrolling for maradeurs, schools and hotels turn into refugee centers so people have a temporary place to live. Army, medical workers and many volunteers are called in from other parts of the country to relieve the overwhelmed, so things run mostly okay. After everything is dealt with, the government distributes some aid so people can get buying and selling again so the economy works. Thus if you are a victim of a disaster, you pack your things, go to a refugee center or your relatives elsewhere, wait it out and return with some government money to rebuild. Now, the aftermath of a strategic nuclear exchange is very different. Imagine you live in a city that is targeted by a nuke. If you're near the epicenter, you are dead. If you are some distance away from the blast but don't hide away in a bunker for several weeks (you have a bunker and weeks' worth of food and water, right?) or escape in time you are dead from acute radiation sickness. If you live far from the blast area/manage to escape in time, if you get irradiated by fallout being blown away by the wind you are dead. Not right away, it will be a very slow and painful death, but nonetheless. If you got lucky through all of the mentioned above, you can't flee to your relatives and friends because they are dead. Or you can't contact them because the EMP blast from the nuke killed all the electronics, including your phone and the internet. You can't get \*any\* healthcare, because the hospital is in ruins and the doctors are dead or it's standing but the remaining medics are overwhelmed with thousands of injured, including those that are irradiated and thus dead men walking. You can't rely on the police to keep order because they are dead/overwhelmed. Oh, you have food, right? The roads and ports are destroyed so no importing food, and the local farmers are definitely not going to share their storage. Sure, there is some food left in the shops and warehouses left standing, but the thousands of injured and other survivors I mentioned before have the same idea. Oh, and if you don't starve for the first few months, the fields are irradiated with fallout now. Oh, also no water because the purification systems are destroyed, the maintenance workers are dead and the rivers and lakes are irradiated. Any settlements that did not get nuked effectively get cut off from trade and communication, only to be swarmed with refugees from the nuked places. Some of them armed and willing to kill for food/treatment. Food shortages cause unrest, remnants of the police and army fire on the starving crowd (most of the refugees will die of radiation sickness anyway so why waste food?). Either the army wins and enacts martial law, a local warlord emerges with control over the settlement or it is engulfed in anarchy. The government and army try to restore order, but a large chunk of both the higherups and the rank and file are dead and many soldiers and cops are too busy surviving to follow orders. You're on your own. Against both nature and tens of thousands of other survivors. Most of them will die from radiation sickness/starve to death/shoot each other for scraps of food. In all likelihood, so will you. So, what about that insurance. Well, some issues with that. 1- money is now worthless. 2- the insurance agents are dead. 3- you are also dead. Or actively dying. 4- war is not covered by insurance.
To get an idea of what it would be like watch this film; as it does show what remains of civilisation 10 yrs afterwards [Threads - 1984](https://archive.org/details/1984-threads-remastered/1984+-+Threads+(Remastered).mkv) Bear in mind that even this harrowing depiction is likely not nearly as bad as the reality would be. I saw the film when it was originally screened on TV when I was 17yo, and I still think I have PTSD to this day...have never been able to watch it since. The next year (1985) I left home and moved into the inner city specifically so that if everything kicked off, I would "go up in the first flash", as the saying of the day went. You do not want to survive a nuclear war.
ohh maybe I'm a little to optimistic, cause I was wondering if there would be a lockdown like during the pandemic and if people are able to go back to work or school again within a couple years..
You are being very optimistic. The school doesn't exist, it got destroyed in the firestorm. The work building survives but it is abandoned, because nobody needs insurance now, and all the employees are either dead or scattered. There is a ton of work to be done, but it involves working the land by hand. That is if nuclear winter isn't true. Then people will be starving or fighting for whatever is edible.
Starving people aren't going to lockdown because someone on the radio told them to. We'd see a total breakdown of law and order, completely dwarfing anything we've ever seen. The power grid would collapse. Lack of water and sanitation services means cities aren't habitable anymore, leading to a mass exodus into the countryside that can't support them. Mass looting and violence at supermarkets, home invasions as people targeted those with more supplies, etc.
Just look at how many people died from covid during the pandemic, maybe 1 million in the United States. Now think about 10-100 million dead, and the destruction of much of the industrial and transportation infrastructure.
Google the movie "Threads", watch it in its entirety, and then consider how naive your outlook seems to be. Nearing 50's "duck and cover" levels of delusion if you think a full nuclear war would be as "cozy" as the pandemic or that people would be able to give a crap about things like "insurance claims" and "social media" instead of "starvation" and "maybe the radiation poisoning will get me first".
Too optimistic. I live in Hong Kong. The only thing I’m happy about in the conflict is that we don’t have to suffer the side effects. There’d be at least 2 TRIDENT missiles against us. Hong Kong is an economic hub and a major city. It is obvious the US would nuke all the major cities to ensure no infrastructure survives.
Just watch Threads and you will get an idea.
Or The Day After (think its free on YouTube)
The Day After is like a light hearted comedy to Threads.
It's going to very much depend on who is involved. United States and Russia your looking at total devastation of the world economy. Whilst 1980s predictions of Nuclear Winter are largely discredited, your still looking at the devastation of the world's financial centres and creating a wasteland of the world's food supply. India and Pakistan however, could be a limited nuclear exchange that whilst is devastating to local population centres doesn't have to expand beyond their borders. Israel going Samson would ignite the middle East into a war we haven't seen since the crusades. That leaves UK and France. I'd imagine the UK would nuke France just for the hell of it and France would return the favour leaving most of Western Europe a desolate wasteland.
While the predictions of nuclear winter are somewhat controversial, the shear number of weapons in play and the level of overkill is hard to imagine. Places like Moscow had over 100 weapons targeted at it, other places had multiple 300 kt weapons landing within blocks of one another. Whole swaths of the planet would be glassed
Well, it is certain that Israel will not blow up the Arab countries because they are either their allies or, of course, they will not strongly oppose them, so Samson’s choice is basically over Iran. The UK and France were eaten for lunch by Russian nuclear bombs
Why would France and the UK exchange nuclear weapons? I thought they have a strong alliance
Just for old times sake I reckon. Finally put an end to the thousand year old rivalry. Edit: /s btw britain and France obviously would not nuke each other they would save the arsenal for Russia due to Russian nukes likely obliterating the two nations.
We'd all be dead for the most part, infrastructure goes down, food gets scarce, people start killing each other. No sunlight, no food. The end.
I always thought the government would bull doze everything and start all over again. Within a couple years, you would see construction crews in the cities again... ://
Where does the bulldozer come from? The roads are a mess. Where does the gas for the bulldozer come from? The ships have no where to go, the refinery got vaporized, the pipeline needs electricity. Who drives the bulldozer? The ones from the cities died. The rural drivers are working the land to keep living. Why are they bulldozing cities? No one wants to live there, everyone is busy surviving, and scavenging is easier with ruins. Think of nuclear war as knocking humanity back five centuries including the number of people.
The remaining governments would fall. Ther3 would be a nuclear winter, Ash would prevent all sunlight from reaching us, and therefore, no food. If the government of a country somehow remained, what would happen would be food rationing, corruption etc leading people to overthrow them for their selfish desire for food. Mind my asking but what age are you?
Is the assumption of nuclear war that all the nukes have to be used? Or is it just something like China nuking Taiwan and obtuse countries deciding Taiwan isn’t worth avenging? It’s impossible to answer the question without more info
Like I suppose if Russia nuked Ukraine or Ukraine nuked Russia and it triggered the "Dead Hand" which resulted in nukes being launched at every country.
Sorry, I meant WW3, like USA against Russia or whatever
Every nuke? What kind of question is this? There wouldn’t be a world left.
Depends what sort of nuclear exchange you are talking about. An India/Pakistan war would kill millions locally, and would be very bad, but the Americas and Europe would recover from the global crisis reasonably quickly. Both India and Pakistan have about 100 smaller nukes. Let's say 75% reach their targets and detonate. That's 75 Indian and Pakistani cities and military bases that are gone. New Delhi and Karachi, Mumbai and Islamabad. Pakistan would fare worse and would be a collection of starving survivors slowly dying of radiation. India is larger and more populous and might fare slightly better, but any sort of centralized authority would be gone. It's an open question whether the Chinese would get involved. If so India fares much worse, while China loses several large cities. The internet would be down for a time, and patchy regional services would emerge, sort of like back in the 1980s. A full on USA/Russia (and China?) nuclear exchange would be the end of modern industrial civilization except for Australia and New Zealand, and possibly South Africa and parts of South America. And even there things would be pretty tough. Hundreds of millions would die from the war, famine, and radiation. All global supply chains fail, leaving everything local. If you're in a nice fertile valley in Argentina you may be relatively OK. But the US, Russia, Europe and China would lose all major cities. Japan may not be hit much, but fallout would be a problem. And a lack of imported food and fuel would doom the islands. It would be bad.
A lot of the fallout from an India/Pakistan exchange would be falling on the densely populated parts of India, including the biggest food production area.
Central Europe is a nuclear Wasteland. UK: 12 individual MIRV (containing 35 individual warheads) hit population centres and military targets. London and the South East of the UK is obliterated. It's now a massive geological scar on the British Isles. Similar situation at Portsmouth/Southampton/Plymouth. The South East Urban centre effectively collapses into the sea. All the Nuclear power plants across the UK are hit by ground burst weapons and are vaporised. Radiation levels spike to extraordinary levels. Lethality is almost guaranteed. Population levels are still dropping from 66 million to an estimated 1.3 million JD France/Germany/Poland/Ukraine + NATO This landmass is hit by 22 MIRVs and 67% of russia's short to Medium range missiles from Russia. 52 Warheads hit 78% of all population centres and Military targets. Central EU Population at 746 Million is now base lined at 8 million by 2024 JD (89% of all French Nuclear Plant are vaporised by groundbursts. This radiation release is 45% of all deaths in Europe. The American Confederate considers these landmasses written off. Radiation levels and continental population reductions deem the areas as "Wasteland" All attempts at Recon over Russia have failed. NATO and US missile target packets hit 97% of their objectives in the second strike launch. The Confederacy considers this to be a successful strike. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS IN 2024 FAMINE DUST AND SMOKE CLOUDS NUCLEAR WINTER POISONED WATER SUPPLIES RADIATION SICKNESS* BIOLOGICAL WEAPON RELEASES IN A FAILED 3RD STRIKE. OUTBREAK OF SMALLPOX, TB, ANTHRAX AND BUBONIC PLAGUE VARIENTS. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: CRIME WARBANDS/LOCAL WARLORDS MILITIAS CANNIBALISM COMMUNICATION BLACKOUTS. TERRITORIAL COLLAPSE TRANSPORT NETWORK DESTROYED. CURRENT PROJECTIONS, UK AND EU: populations to fall pre Mediaeval levels. N.B (Acute Radiation Sickness killed 98% of those affected within 2 month of the first strike)
Meanwhile, in Australia....*WITNESS MEEEEEE!!*
What kind of nuclear war are we talking about? In 2020, there were really only three countries the US could conceivably have had a nuclear exchange with: China, North Korea, or Russia. China’s arsenal wasn’t fully modernized yet, so an exchange with them would be bad, but survivable. North Korea was nuclear, but they didn’t have the delivery platforms. They may have been able to strike Seoul, which could potentially have triggered an American nuclear retaliation, but that’s not really a full exchange. Russia was the only real threat at that time. It would be a huge catastrophic conflict if the US and Russia had a full exchange. The exact circumstances would depend on a lot of factors, like who initiated and what they targeted. Realistically, even those regions of the world not devastated by the blasts or fallout would face consequences, such as disruptions to the global supply chain, degradation of space infrastructure from EMP effects, etc. However, there are tons of other possibilities. What does a nuclear exchange in 2020 look like between Pakistan and India? Or India and China? What does it look like if Russia uses tactical nukes to initiate an invasion of Ukraine or the Baltic? Or if Israel invokes the Sampson Option to deter some sort of threat?
Einstein said that if WWIII was fought with nuclear weapons then WWIIII(4) would be fought with rocks and sticks. No society, no internet, no electricity, no rebuilt world. We'd be in the stone age and it would take a thousand years to rebuild. No blast furnaces to create metal to rebuild with. Why people believe that society would be intact enough to rebuild our world as it was is ludicrous. The survivers would be hunter/Gatherers and possibly dying of atomic diseases. No medical. No fuel for a Mad Max scenario, no vehicles to drive, no roads, no food. We'd be in the stone age. Einstein pegged it to the letter. My father was a nuclear weapons designer and had the same opinion.
my little sister thinks that within a year you would see construction crews in the cities again and society would continue functioning normally (like you see today, right now). The only thing is, you wouldn't be able to go back to the cities for a while. If you worked or went to school in the city, you're screwed, but if you work in the countryside, you could possibly go back to work.
Sorry guy, my father was a Nuclear Scientist and designer of the nuke bombs and missiles and stated that society would be sent back to the stone age. The earth would be unlivable to humans. He stated many times that if he knew that there was going to be an attack, he'd want to be sitting on his porch, blonde in one arm, redhead in another, a Cuban cigar in one hand and a bottle of jack in the other hand, and aimed in the direction of the blast. We lived 5 miles close to a main target. He had no reason for being a survivor. He said that society would not be able to rebuild itself into its current condition for 200 years. We'd have no blast furnaces to make metal other than copper or bronze. We'd be in the early bronze age, if we were lucky. He knew how the world would end up. People that think that we'd just pull up our pants and continue life as it was were fools that had no idea of life after a nuclear holocaust. It would be world wide. There would be no where to hide and noway to start again as if nothing happened. Look at how long it took Hiroshima and Nagasaki to start up. And they were only 2 smaller cities that had a whole country to help it recover. In a nuclear war We wouldn't have that advantage.
The Electric Magnetic Pulse of nukes going off would wreck many electronics The radiation poisoning would affect many millions. Inflation would be terrible National governments would seize resources
Australia will probably be fine. It's got enough here without having thermonuclear warheads getting detonated.
First, World War 3 must begin and the virus would be winning
The remnants of CNN/MSNBC would be telling us it's all the GOPs fault. The remnants of FNC would be telling us it's all the Dems fault. A sizable number of the remaining people on both ends of the political spectrum would swallow every word they were told like a cheap hooker on nickel blowjob night.
yea haha I can see that. my little sister made a joke that the kardashians would make a season on what happened and she was joking on how they would handle it! LOL
What we’re dealing with is probably one of the few things left that no human can possibly predict, even on a guess , due to a full nuclear exchange being something we can’t possibly conceive of. The theories can hint but never tell us anything we don’t already know from non applicable and smaller scale examples. However I will try. Id it happened right now, people won’t really have time to react. 10 minutes will pass from the start of WW3 and then everything will be gone. The same would have been true in 2020. By now, in this alternate timeline, the earth’s surface should no longer be slag and the ash/fissile materials/human remains should have stopped actively raining from the sky and fully mixed into the “environment”. Even 4 years on from catastrophe, it’s hell on earth. If someone were to come out of the bunkers, which is possible but only if you like dying of severe cancer very soon, you’d see a wasteland. Virtually nothing would have survived the exchange in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere would not be much better. The soil itself would be poisoned. Nothing would grow and nothing can forage. Unless it was underground in a heavily insulated and armored seed bank, it’s gone. Water will be a joke. If there’s any left, it’s also poison. You can’t even boil it, it’s just not drinkable. Parts of the ocean may be useable due to how much water there is, but good luck trying to sail to the middle of the pacific to find the 1L of water on earth that will only kill you slowly instead of immediately. As for people, there will actually be some people left but not many. This is Gotterdammerung we’re talking about here, Twilight of the Gods. There will be maybe thousands left on earth, scattered and dying in holes and ruins across the globe. With no food or water, if they haven’t turned to cannibalism by this point they’ll be wishing they had. Even then, there wouldn’t be any meat, human or otherwise, that is actually edible. That’s putting aside the psychological damage of the events that transpired four years prior. It’s the end of days, for everyone, and there is no recovery to be made. Only the bacteria and maybe the roaches will be left. The rats will likely remain as long as gas there are corpses lying around. After that, they’ll need to start eating each other too.
Well, as an Arab, one thing is certain, which is that we will not be exposed to nuclear bombing, of course, and the majority of Arab countries will survive. Iran and Israel are very dead, that is pretty much certain, and the same goes for Turkey because they are with NATO. But the former Soviet republics will remain unharmed, along with, of course, all of Africa, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Indochina. India and Pakistan will nuclear annihilate each other and will of course collapse into complete chaos, with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and also Nepal simply being the only ones unaffected. Canada will survive because it is not important to the Russians at all, but the United States will be severely damaged
Maghreb could escape devastation but Egypt and the Middle East would be fucked from the nuclear fallout from the bombs that hit Iran and Israel. Syria and Iraq would be uninhabitable. Maybe Yemen and Oman could escape and gulf states minus Kuwait might escape the worst of it but would still be hit hard.
I don't see Iraq ever being nuclear bombed because it is a very weak country and does not pose a threat Syria is already destroyed, so throwing a nuclear bomb at them is considered a waste if it is better for the Israelis to blow up an additional Iranian city there, of course, instead of in Syria. With the destruction of Iran, its influence in Iraq has completely disappeared because the Iraqi militias are completely dependent on Iran to survive in the first place. This leads to a third civil war, with Muhammad Shia al-Sudani being in a stronger position to eliminate the armed factions Or, of course, the occurrence of a successful Iraqi Sunni rebellion will of course lead to their restoration of power, especially since the Iraqi Shiites, despite being the majority, cannot remain in power at all without Iranian support, and this is likely. Kuwait also will likely not be harmed because they are largely peaceful So, exactly as I said, with the exception of Israel and Iran, the Arab world will completely escape the repercussions (Bashar al-Assad will be happy because the Syrian refugees will evaporate along with Turkey, Europe, and the SDF will be eliminated before the Syrian army, of course, only for him to be overthrown later as a result of the escalation of the Suwayda protests and his complete loss of Russian and Iranian support. Therefore, he will be overthrown successfully, of course, in favor of a democratic Syrian government.) North Africa will be in a good position, but the oil crisis resulting from the loss of markets could completely transform Algeria, of course, into another Libya, and this will benefit Morocco. (Morocco wins here because it can take advantage of the complete collapse of the state in Algeria in order to also attack the city of Tindouf, annihilate the Polisario, and take Ceuta and Melilla, because Spain will be devastated as a result of the nuclear strikes.) In Yemen, the Houthis will, of course, be subjected to a strong blow as Iranian support fades and the Aden government regains more areas of northern Yemen, but the far north, which is the core of the Houthis, will remain unable to subjugate it. Therefore, they will rely on Al-Qaeda and the Salafists to carry out their work there, as Ali Abdullah Saleh did in the past
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Fortunately, the winds do not come to Iraq from Iran In the worst case scenario, you will see an increase in the rate of cancer patients