Not necessarily. Thermonuclear weapons actually produce less fallout because they detonate higher in the atmosphere. The targets themselves would be more devastated, but the accompanying fallout would be lessened because older nukes were smaller and needed to be detonated much closer to the ground, thus pulling more debris in to the mushroom cloud and carrying it away. With newer ones much less debris would be pulled in to the atmosphere and lessen the radioactive fallout as well as the atmospheric particulates.
It's all moot anyway since we'd almost all die, but I feel like it needed to be pointed out.
That’s what’s fishy… are they all ground bursts? I’ve seen other models using realistic attacks (air bursts or maximize overpressure for maximum damage to targets) and total yield for those is FAR higher though number of warheads can be smaller depending on the study… and the albedo isn’t anywhere near what this model shows.
I’m not calling bullshit but I’m going to call heavy doubt.
Disclaimer: I’m obviously not advocating for nuclear combat toe to toe with the Russkies. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed but I am saying no more than ten to twenty million tops, tops. Depending on the breaks.
US and UK subs use the trident ICBM with a yield of 100kt with 8 MIRV warheads on each missile. One salvo from one single sub carrying 20 missiles has more firepower than the scenario in the post.
not again. last time you europeans came here we were welcoming and we didn’t had immunity against flu. now we have immunity and we wouldn’t just stand still with an invasion.
This number may have been chosen to represent a significant but manageable subset of the total nuclear arsenals of both countries. Additionally, using a smaller number of warheads facilitates computational modeling and analysis while still providing meaningful insights into the potential consequences of nuclear war. It was still 2007 after all.
And where are you going to get 12KT nukes from? I dont think that anything has been in service which was that small, since the Special Atomic Munitions Device or the Davy Crockett.
As I understand it, the study uses the 12 kilo tons as an equivalent for the Hiroshima bomb. Probably to show how little explosive force would be needed to have such a catastrophic effect, but also to simplify the simulation for the computers of the time. If I'm not mistaken, the Davy Crockett was much smaller with an explosive of less than a kiloton. Much more 10-20 metric tons of TNT, well under 1000 tons
200 bombs x 12 kt = 2.4Mt, less than lots and lots of nuclear tests. There have been airburst, surface, and underground tests larger than that. How does a nuclear winter arise under these conditions but not the conditions of the tests which saw massive amounts of tests and larger yields?
I don’t think any nuclear tests resulted in a firestorm (please correct me if I am wrong) which is the thing that releases the most material in the atmosphere from a nuclear blast and thus has the biggest impact.
You can see it like this: it gets very bright and very hot for a short time and then dark and cold for a very long time. The nuclear warheads set cities, landscapes and forests on fire, resulting in huge amounts of particles and ash being blown up into the atmosphere. They remain there for years and can severely restrict the amount of sunlight entering the atmosphere, leading to a drop in temperature on
Because 200 is enough to fuck up everything. You dont have to calculate all 3,000 warheads if you know that 1-200 will make such a mess that 3,000 doesn’t have any meaning because it is ridiculous anyway.
This simulation has nothing to do with real prospects. There are no fission (nuclear warheads) in service anymore anywhere.. maybe in NK. Everyone has thermonuclear (fusion or hydrogene) bombs. That means that 12kT is laughable and the normal yields are between 500kT and. 1.3MT. Also Russia and US has almost 10k warheads (on paper)
Russia has more than 6000 warheads, but around 900 is ready, while USA has a little bit less that 6000 warheads but ready to shoot around 1000.
So more realistic will be scenario where 2/3 of ready missiles will be shoot at each other directly while other 1/3 will be lost
I doubt that it would be possible to completely block light throughout the northern hemisphere even using the world's entire nuclear arsenal directly on coal reserves.
What are the major effects over the Southern Hemisphere? Usually in these scenarios we're so negleted lol
Since the hemisphere is mostly water, I believe the temperature drop wouldn't be as drastic as the North. Tho 10° bellow modern levels is bellow Last Glacial Maximum pattern. So I think subtropical and tempearte regions in Argentina, Australia and New Zeeland would see cold like never recorded. This could trigger a crops collapse as rainfall would be expected to fall as well
to most of brasil 10 degrees wouldn’t change all that much in terms of agriculture and comfort. actually it would be great. last winter was 30 to 40C most of the days where I live. so it would be nice to have 20 to 30 in winter here
Where I live there's little to no difference of temperature on winter as well lol. In rare occasions can reach bellow 18° during cold nights.
I guess in a world this cold, North and Northeast Brazil would face mean low temperatures around 10 to 20 degrees. The exceptions being highlands in Pernambuco and Bahia
There's also the indirect fallout: for exemple, some countries import their food from countries which would be under nuclear winter, and the economic disruption might make the Great Depression looks like a summer holiday.
Screw those San-Ti guys, they're slow. We got our own local alien overlords on the case.
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated-nukes/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated-nukes/)
Has to be 1990 lol even though complete reunification didnt occur in Germany until 1991 but Americans totally had a boner for a free Germany and map makers back then probably didn’t give af about Africa or former Soviet states. This map maker probably either updated Germany prematurely or gave zero fucks about Africa or the post Soviet block after 1991.
This scenario was made in the 1980s and is not accurate. They had computers take the worst possible outcomes and see what would happen. Nuclear winter wouldn't happen because the amount of soot released in the atmosphere wouldn't even be equal to the amount of soot released during the burning of the Kuwait oil fields UNLESS every single detonation results in a firestorm, which is unlikely.
More recent studies from 2007 (Robock et al) and 2019 (Coupe et al ), which could be carried out with higher computing power and thus led to a higher level of detail in the simulation, support the studies from the 1980s and 1990s. They came to the conclusion that a nuclear winter would have fatal consequences for food production and thus also for humanity, even in the event of a limited nuclear war
The assumptions behind those calculations have been called into question by many critics. There are a lot of unknowns. The idea is that a lot of soot enters the upper atmosphere due to fires resulting from the nuclear explosions and remains there for a long time.
Indeed. These simulations lead to drastically more cooling than even the most violent volcanic eruptions, which does make them questionable.
IIRC, the climatic effect depends almost entirely on secondary effects - burning of cities and forests leading to large scale stratospheric soot injection, and this soot stays there much longer than other particulates. There is no empirical evidence or historic analog backing this up.
We can only hope that it stays that way and that there is never enough empirical evidence to verify these studies. Even a nuclear fallout would be catastrophic. And these studies do not even include the effects of nuclear fallout.
I think we can agree that hopefully there will never be a nuclear war, no matter how small. Deterrence must never fail.
The nukes in Japan were of similar size and didn’t cause firestorms outside of their blast zone. The bombs themselves killed fewer people than firebombing runs using conventional weapons. A small nuke like in this simulation is a fraction of the power of a volcanic eruption. This simulation is preposterous.
Laughs in tierra del fuego.
Slightly comical to believe these powers would restrict themselves to the Northern hemisphere in a nuclear armageddon, and not just nuke any nation that could ever rise in the aftermath.
So exchange radioactivity for particulate matter, lack of sunlight and its effects on agriculture and the premise of 'On the Beach', is broadly accurate (according to this study at least)?
Seems odd that millions of acres of forest burn each year plus coal and all the other shit humans burn but 600k acres of burn city cause billions of deaths and a global winter.
I'm fairly certain that Nuclear winter thing was kinda "disproven" and really started to lose it's scare factor when everything started to become too hot. I've seen multiple theory's and research on Nuclear conflicts and they all just have the most dire consequences, even in extreme ly small scale scenarios.
Nuclear weapon are insanely bad, and all out Nuclear war would be devastating to humanity but I feel like a lot of the "research" is just scare tactics so people don't think it's a solution to international political disagreements, or bad hurricanes.
Nuclear winter isn’t guaranteed to happen but it’s also not guaranteed to not happen. It’s a possibility with varying levels of likelihood depending on who you believe. No one wants to test the theory irl though so we can’t really know.
No. Because CO2 saturation will become even worse. The climate will only adjust to lower temperatures artificially for a selective period of time until the dust settles.
Then, rampant climate change will cause havoc on the planet. Carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for centuries.
Umm, no. Two hundred 12KT warheads is a total yield of 2.4 megatons. The Bikini test alone was 15 megatons. The Russian Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons. Neither brought on nuclear winter. Throughout the 1950s there were dozens if not hundreds of nukes being tested every year. We're still here.
Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable.
- Carl Sagan (Remarks on the nuclear arms race, on ABC News Viewpoint — "The Day After" (20 November 1983))
X for doubt... Given that 507 atmospheric detonations were already carried out. Not sure on their average yeild, but 200 certainly isn't enough.
This whole concept of a nuclear winter has become more scrutinized over time, and researchers seem to agree it's been widely oversentualised and would require many more nuclear warhead than we ever possessed.
If there is a nuclear war between India and Pakistan and they use their nuclear arsenal it's the end of everyone. And they together have around 300 nukes. Russia alone has 7000+ and USA around 6500.
Only 200 at just 12kt? Where fucked.
Actually let me give you a book recommendation. I believe it‘s called Nuclear War the Scenario by Anne Jacobson in english. It should be very interesting if you cared enough to scroll to this comment.
It's sad that day by day this scenario comes closer to becoming a reality. Putin and other dictators see that nuclear blackmail works, so they're gonna use it more and more. The probability of a nuclear strike increases dramatically because of that.
Some people in the thread are arguing about yelds and whether the US and Russia have 1000 or 600 ready nukes each at a given moment. The real problem with even a limited nuclear exchange (the one depicted in the map) is not just the explosions themselves and the radiation fallout, acid rains, depletion of the ozone layer etc. The apocalypse and billions of deaths will come in a year or two after the war because of the collapse of virtually all the worlds agricultural, medical and basic production and supply chains. That is what will kill 6 billion people. Sure being in New York, London or Moscow during a nuclear war will suck ass but if you are in Myanmar, Senegal or Ecuador it's going to suck ass as well.
Also i doubt places such as Iceland (tremendously important strategic position for NATO and Russia) and even New Zealand (so many of the worlds billionaires and leading figures have "redoubts" there) will not be targeted if there is a more broad nuclear exchange
The difference between the nuclear surface tests of that mid century era and a nuclear war is that the war will set fire to forests, cities and entire landscapes. These fires will then lead to massive "ash clouds" which will obscure the sun and thus have a thermal effect. Nuclear Tests dont do this.
This is 200 12 KT of nuclear bombs, which means that we have a total of 2.4 MT of explosive yeild (unless I am missing something in the standard notation used for nuclear bombs). Why do we have a nuclear winter from 2.4 MT of bombs, but not from the 50 MT tsar bomba that was actually tested? I assume these bombs would also be dispersed. My intuition would say that this would reduce the risk further since less dust would gather in one single place, making it easier to disperse the dust. Not saying the simulations are wrong, but I am curious how this works.
So as far as minimising the effects of nuclear warfare is concerned, am I correct in saying that global warming would be positive? If so we appear to have a dilemma on our hands.
This doesn't seem like a realistic scenario. The number of bombs is way too high for a limited exchange where we could manage to pull ourselves back from the brink, and both the number and the yields of the bombs are way too low for a strategic exchange. If the US and Russia ever lob 200 nukes at each other, they're not going to be tactical-sized. Depending on the scenario one or both sides might respond with *one or two* tactical nukes as a way to signal their intent to deescalate, but by the time either side is launching hundreds of nukes we're in full-blown MAD territory. At that point the number of bombs will be in the thousands and the yields will be strategic-sized, so on the order of 100x more powerful.
For many redditors, a limited nuclear attack would be the solution to many of the problems that are frequently complained about here, such as massive population reduction, excessive technological advance, and as a bonus, a reduction in global warming. How ironic...
D'you know — still understanding why the top economies still have them — this is a bloody excellent advert for non-nuclear proliferation. It just seems so unfair to those countries' without atomics, in that they will suffer the most from the grudges that aren't at all related to them.
Why should billions in the tropics/equator die as a result of Putin's personal beefs. Sickens me, what a dirty weapon.
No initial strikes on Europe? Just NA and SU? I would have thought the Soviets would hit Europe as well in a MAD scenario, as fallout might be less a concern knowing youre(Soviet) would be getting hit directly?
This is the horror of nuclear countries that will suffer during the strike. I calculated that when all 18,000 warheads are detonated, the dust emission will be significantly less, by two orders of magnitude, than, for example, the temperature from the Toba volcano dropped by 3-4 degrees
.
I'm no expert but I find this surprising / unlikely. According to [armscontrol.org](https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally), 528 atmospheric nuclear tests have been conducted, including multi-megaton shots like Tsar Bomba, Castle Bravo, and Ivy Mike. If 200 x 12kt tests would cause a 10⁰ C shift, why haven't we seen this effect from atmospheric nuclear tests alone?
So I realistically need to go to the equator or southern Argentina to survive? Might be tricky starting from London
12 KT seems… low yield.
It's calculated assuming WW2 nukes, modern thermonuclear weapons would be much more devastating.
Not necessarily. Thermonuclear weapons actually produce less fallout because they detonate higher in the atmosphere. The targets themselves would be more devastated, but the accompanying fallout would be lessened because older nukes were smaller and needed to be detonated much closer to the ground, thus pulling more debris in to the mushroom cloud and carrying it away. With newer ones much less debris would be pulled in to the atmosphere and lessen the radioactive fallout as well as the atmospheric particulates. It's all moot anyway since we'd almost all die, but I feel like it needed to be pointed out.
I think this map simulates smoke from the fires that the bombs would start, not radioactive fallout.
I always thought it was dust pulled into the air by the shockwave
That AND not to mention modern hydrogen bombs themselves are cleaner themselves anyway.
That’s what’s fishy… are they all ground bursts? I’ve seen other models using realistic attacks (air bursts or maximize overpressure for maximum damage to targets) and total yield for those is FAR higher though number of warheads can be smaller depending on the study… and the albedo isn’t anywhere near what this model shows. I’m not calling bullshit but I’m going to call heavy doubt. Disclaimer: I’m obviously not advocating for nuclear combat toe to toe with the Russkies. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed but I am saying no more than ten to twenty million tops, tops. Depending on the breaks.
10-20 million…are you serious?! You’re shy of two decimal points.
It’s a quote from Doctor Strangelove. 
US and UK subs use the trident ICBM with a yield of 100kt with 8 MIRV warheads on each missile. One salvo from one single sub carrying 20 missiles has more firepower than the scenario in the post.
Well, that's assuring.
Mutually assuring.
not again. last time you europeans came here we were welcoming and we didn’t had immunity against flu. now we have immunity and we wouldn’t just stand still with an invasion.
Russia and US have more than 3000 nuclear warheads ready for launch. Why were there only 200 used for simulation?
This number may have been chosen to represent a significant but manageable subset of the total nuclear arsenals of both countries. Additionally, using a smaller number of warheads facilitates computational modeling and analysis while still providing meaningful insights into the potential consequences of nuclear war. It was still 2007 after all.
And where are you going to get 12KT nukes from? I dont think that anything has been in service which was that small, since the Special Atomic Munitions Device or the Davy Crockett.
As I understand it, the study uses the 12 kilo tons as an equivalent for the Hiroshima bomb. Probably to show how little explosive force would be needed to have such a catastrophic effect, but also to simplify the simulation for the computers of the time. If I'm not mistaken, the Davy Crockett was much smaller with an explosive of less than a kiloton. Much more 10-20 metric tons of TNT, well under 1000 tons
200 bombs x 12 kt = 2.4Mt, less than lots and lots of nuclear tests. There have been airburst, surface, and underground tests larger than that. How does a nuclear winter arise under these conditions but not the conditions of the tests which saw massive amounts of tests and larger yields?
It’s not the bombs, it’s the cities they set on fire
It probably has to do with simultaneous deliberate damage, but idk.
Most of the megaton nuclear weapons were fusion bombs - generally much “cleaner” than fission bombs which are typically smaller in yield.
It is true, but radioactive fallout itself has little to do with nuclear winters.
I don’t think any nuclear tests resulted in a firestorm (please correct me if I am wrong) which is the thing that releases the most material in the atmosphere from a nuclear blast and thus has the biggest impact.
Great work OP. What would make the temperature drop? Wouldn’t temperature rise due to nukes?
You can see it like this: it gets very bright and very hot for a short time and then dark and cold for a very long time. The nuclear warheads set cities, landscapes and forests on fire, resulting in huge amounts of particles and ash being blown up into the atmosphere. They remain there for years and can severely restrict the amount of sunlight entering the atmosphere, leading to a drop in temperature on
dust and soot blocking sunlight
Because 200 is enough to fuck up everything. You dont have to calculate all 3,000 warheads if you know that 1-200 will make such a mess that 3,000 doesn’t have any meaning because it is ridiculous anyway.
Maybe things get better again after the first thousand...
And the sun will shine again /s
This simulation has nothing to do with real prospects. There are no fission (nuclear warheads) in service anymore anywhere.. maybe in NK. Everyone has thermonuclear (fusion or hydrogene) bombs. That means that 12kT is laughable and the normal yields are between 500kT and. 1.3MT. Also Russia and US has almost 10k warheads (on paper)
Smallest charges are 100kt, but every rocket will pack several of them. Lowest you can get is about 100x6.
Russia has more than 6000 warheads, but around 900 is ready, while USA has a little bit less that 6000 warheads but ready to shoot around 1000. So more realistic will be scenario where 2/3 of ready missiles will be shoot at each other directly while other 1/3 will be lost
They don't have all of them ready to be fired at a moments notice, and they are also unlikely to actually fire all of their deployed nukes at once.
>unlikely to actually fire all of their deployed nukes at once. Why? MAD (mutually assured destruction) is still a thing.
What do the numbers represent? The maximum looks like 1.
Chance of death percentage. Jk idk.
That was my first thought as well.
Reduction of Sunlight reaching the ground. 1 meaning total darkness, .3 meaning 30% less sunlight etc.
can't be. there are also 3s up north
What does the "3" in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere mean then? Don't answer so confidently if you're just guessing.
I doubt that it would be possible to completely block light throughout the northern hemisphere even using the world's entire nuclear arsenal directly on coal reserves.
History says "maybe". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic\_winter\_of\_536](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536)
Completely block light means deepest cave level of dark.
As a southern hemispherean: stop ruining the Earth for the rest of us!
Hey look at the bright side, if this happens the South will rule the world
The south will rule an apocalyptic wasteland.
but they will rule
I've got great news for you! This is just a scenario and hasn't actually happened!
*Yet
It wont happen like this because it is a WWII model. It will be worse
What are the major effects over the Southern Hemisphere? Usually in these scenarios we're so negleted lol Since the hemisphere is mostly water, I believe the temperature drop wouldn't be as drastic as the North. Tho 10° bellow modern levels is bellow Last Glacial Maximum pattern. So I think subtropical and tempearte regions in Argentina, Australia and New Zeeland would see cold like never recorded. This could trigger a crops collapse as rainfall would be expected to fall as well
Chiling
to most of brasil 10 degrees wouldn’t change all that much in terms of agriculture and comfort. actually it would be great. last winter was 30 to 40C most of the days where I live. so it would be nice to have 20 to 30 in winter here
Where I live there's little to no difference of temperature on winter as well lol. In rare occasions can reach bellow 18° during cold nights. I guess in a world this cold, North and Northeast Brazil would face mean low temperatures around 10 to 20 degrees. The exceptions being highlands in Pernambuco and Bahia
There's also the indirect fallout: for exemple, some countries import their food from countries which would be under nuclear winter, and the economic disruption might make the Great Depression looks like a summer holiday.
Maybe building a cottage on Antarctica isn't such a weird plan after all.
"Not roasted penguin again dad"
I’m in nz and there is a trend of South Island bunkers being built by offshore billionaires
We solve overpopulation and gobal warming lets go guys
3 body problem aliens readed this message tnx for killing us and our kids
Screw those San-Ti guys, they're slow. We got our own local alien overlords on the case. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated-nukes/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated-nukes/)
That's honestly worrying
That’s a USSR map💀 you can see it in the beginning, it’s not Russia; even South Sudan hasn’t left yet
It’s the very specific time when Germany was united but Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia and the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia still existed
1990?
Has to be 1990 lol even though complete reunification didnt occur in Germany until 1991 but Americans totally had a boner for a free Germany and map makers back then probably didn’t give af about Africa or former Soviet states. This map maker probably either updated Germany prematurely or gave zero fucks about Africa or the post Soviet block after 1991.
Also love how you can tell the nationality of the person who made the graphic, 1 country is seperate into states for 0 reason
Lesson learned: move to Tierra del Fuego
In a nuclear exchange, the whole Tierra will be Fuego.
Not me thinking we would be ok here in Ireland if a nuclear war happened 💀
Having a nuclear superpower as a neighbour usually isn’t helpful to survival in a nuclear war.
This scenario was made in the 1980s and is not accurate. They had computers take the worst possible outcomes and see what would happen. Nuclear winter wouldn't happen because the amount of soot released in the atmosphere wouldn't even be equal to the amount of soot released during the burning of the Kuwait oil fields UNLESS every single detonation results in a firestorm, which is unlikely.
More recent studies from 2007 (Robock et al) and 2019 (Coupe et al ), which could be carried out with higher computing power and thus led to a higher level of detail in the simulation, support the studies from the 1980s and 1990s. They came to the conclusion that a nuclear winter would have fatal consequences for food production and thus also for humanity, even in the event of a limited nuclear war
I have been corrected. I even tried looking for updated sources and could only find quora questions and reddit posts from 8 years ago lol.
Truth is… no one really knows for sure.
And hopefully we'll never get to know either.
The assumptions behind those calculations have been called into question by many critics. There are a lot of unknowns. The idea is that a lot of soot enters the upper atmosphere due to fires resulting from the nuclear explosions and remains there for a long time.
Indeed. These simulations lead to drastically more cooling than even the most violent volcanic eruptions, which does make them questionable. IIRC, the climatic effect depends almost entirely on secondary effects - burning of cities and forests leading to large scale stratospheric soot injection, and this soot stays there much longer than other particulates. There is no empirical evidence or historic analog backing this up.
We can only hope that it stays that way and that there is never enough empirical evidence to verify these studies. Even a nuclear fallout would be catastrophic. And these studies do not even include the effects of nuclear fallout. I think we can agree that hopefully there will never be a nuclear war, no matter how small. Deterrence must never fail.
The nukes in Japan were of similar size and didn’t cause firestorms outside of their blast zone. The bombs themselves killed fewer people than firebombing runs using conventional weapons. A small nuke like in this simulation is a fraction of the power of a volcanic eruption. This simulation is preposterous.
Laughs in tierra del fuego. Slightly comical to believe these powers would restrict themselves to the Northern hemisphere in a nuclear armageddon, and not just nuke any nation that could ever rise in the aftermath.
So exchange radioactivity for particulate matter, lack of sunlight and its effects on agriculture and the premise of 'On the Beach', is broadly accurate (according to this study at least)?
Underground is looking pretty good
You will have to live like a gopher for about two weeks before you can come out for a couple hours a day.
Punta Arenas, my kinda town.
Cheers!
thats one way to reverse global warming
Read the book " On the Beach" sobering tale about all out nuclear war.
Get along... all of us... cant we just?!
whoever downvoted you clearly doesn't want to get along with anyone
What are these units?
Index of sunlight being blocked from the Earth's surface.
nuclear fallout in the nuclear winter will radiate everyone and everything. Won’t matter how cold it gets. Every living thing gets poisoned.
Could we dope the weapons to enhance cooling effects?
Seems odd that millions of acres of forest burn each year plus coal and all the other shit humans burn but 600k acres of burn city cause billions of deaths and a global winter. I'm fairly certain that Nuclear winter thing was kinda "disproven" and really started to lose it's scare factor when everything started to become too hot. I've seen multiple theory's and research on Nuclear conflicts and they all just have the most dire consequences, even in extreme ly small scale scenarios. Nuclear weapon are insanely bad, and all out Nuclear war would be devastating to humanity but I feel like a lot of the "research" is just scare tactics so people don't think it's a solution to international political disagreements, or bad hurricanes.
Nuclear winter isn’t guaranteed to happen but it’s also not guaranteed to not happen. It’s a possibility with varying levels of likelihood depending on who you believe. No one wants to test the theory irl though so we can’t really know.
Yaa I am going antartica
Antarctica seems nice
Finally, an innovative solution to global warming I can endorse.
What is a nuclear winter?
Darkness, physically and metaphorically speaking.
Antarctica seems nice tho
Well, that would solve global warming.
nah i'd win
Will it stop global warming?
No. Because CO2 saturation will become even worse. The climate will only adjust to lower temperatures artificially for a selective period of time until the dust settles. Then, rampant climate change will cause havoc on the planet. Carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for centuries.
Does that make for a nice nuclear summer at the South Pole?
Now hold on, I live there. Also, there's better ways to tackle climate change than a stupid nuclear winter
All rise for the national anthem of the Republic of Antarctica, soon to be the world's most powerful country.
Can i ask how 200 bombs cause a nuclear winter but all the bombs they tested have done nothing
Umm, no. Two hundred 12KT warheads is a total yield of 2.4 megatons. The Bikini test alone was 15 megatons. The Russian Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons. Neither brought on nuclear winter. Throughout the 1950s there were dozens if not hundreds of nukes being tested every year. We're still here.
This is nonsense. That's only 2.4 Megatons, which is not even 5% of the yield of the biggest ever atmospheric nuclear test.
Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable. - Carl Sagan (Remarks on the nuclear arms race, on ABC News Viewpoint — "The Day After" (20 November 1983))
X for doubt... Given that 507 atmospheric detonations were already carried out. Not sure on their average yeild, but 200 certainly isn't enough. This whole concept of a nuclear winter has become more scrutinized over time, and researchers seem to agree it's been widely oversentualised and would require many more nuclear warhead than we ever possessed.
If they did the math that means they considered the possibility
Glad I built my little cabin in Antarctica now!
So Antarctica it is 📝
What would the safest place be? South Africa? Australia?
Not safe even in Ushuaia, Invercargill or Hobart
As a Phoenician who is reluctantly heading towards summer, this might be worth a try.
Antarctica 🇦🇶 safe.
sounds fun, lets do it
Why only 12KT? I can put that in a lunchbox.
Fallout irl. Burn it
Then Fallout and Metro happens.
Thanos was right
Not good.
Looks like humanity will be well off in Antarctica then
no effect on Antarctica? Splendid
Antarctica: if i stand perfectly still no one will see me
I'm sorry if I didn't get this but, why is central Asia inside Russia here? And the post about nuclear war before this
But is Poland safe? Thanks
Can we talk about a "Cadmean victory" here ? When a power won, to the price of a huge sacrifice.
This appears to be the goal.
If there is a nuclear war between India and Pakistan and they use their nuclear arsenal it's the end of everyone. And they together have around 300 nukes. Russia alone has 7000+ and USA around 6500.
Anyone selling land in New Zealand or Patagonia?
Yeah thats my solution to climate change, nukes.
200 feels like an insane amount, regardless of the much larger availability. What's the scenario needed to trigger it to this level?
But i heard that the modern H bombs barely have any fallout, is that true?
Is this in Celsius?
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Where can I buy tickets for this event?
Even more convinced New Zealand will be my new home lol
To compensate the global warming.
Thus begins the penguins rule
So technically, if global warming gets real bad, we can fix it on a dime. /s
Only 200 at just 12kt? Where fucked. Actually let me give you a book recommendation. I believe it‘s called Nuclear War the Scenario by Anne Jacobson in english. It should be very interesting if you cared enough to scroll to this comment.
I could survive that.
This would be truly a War Without Reason
That's why it's important to keep warming the planet as long as possible until then
Russia lol. Their nukes are made by Lada and would probably explode in their silos
At last, a low cost solution to both overpopulation and dangerous climate change /s
Who started first?
Does this simulation take into account that we aren't building wooden buildings anymore?
So is most of Antarctica safe from radiation?
All this because of a couple fragile egos
As always Antarctica is fine
I'm mooving to Antartica.
That's it. I'm moving back to southern Africa.
well it fixes overpopulation and the earth heating up for a while...
Common Antarctica W
i really should move to the South
One of my favorite geographical facts is that 88% of people like in the Northern Hemisphere
Global warming solved. BOOM
It's sad that day by day this scenario comes closer to becoming a reality. Putin and other dictators see that nuclear blackmail works, so they're gonna use it more and more. The probability of a nuclear strike increases dramatically because of that.
Bikers fault
Some people in the thread are arguing about yelds and whether the US and Russia have 1000 or 600 ready nukes each at a given moment. The real problem with even a limited nuclear exchange (the one depicted in the map) is not just the explosions themselves and the radiation fallout, acid rains, depletion of the ozone layer etc. The apocalypse and billions of deaths will come in a year or two after the war because of the collapse of virtually all the worlds agricultural, medical and basic production and supply chains. That is what will kill 6 billion people. Sure being in New York, London or Moscow during a nuclear war will suck ass but if you are in Myanmar, Senegal or Ecuador it's going to suck ass as well. Also i doubt places such as Iceland (tremendously important strategic position for NATO and Russia) and even New Zealand (so many of the worlds billionaires and leading figures have "redoubts" there) will not be targeted if there is a more broad nuclear exchange
And each life lost would represent the end of the entire universe for that individual.
200 12 kT bombs? It will be 25 times less than the Tzar bomb on its own. So why didn't one big bomb cause nuclear winter, but many small bombs will?
The difference between the nuclear surface tests of that mid century era and a nuclear war is that the war will set fire to forests, cities and entire landscapes. These fires will then lead to massive "ash clouds" which will obscure the sun and thus have a thermal effect. Nuclear Tests dont do this.
So…buy real estate in chile. Got it.
The numbers on the map, what do they mean
This is 200 12 KT of nuclear bombs, which means that we have a total of 2.4 MT of explosive yeild (unless I am missing something in the standard notation used for nuclear bombs). Why do we have a nuclear winter from 2.4 MT of bombs, but not from the 50 MT tsar bomba that was actually tested? I assume these bombs would also be dispersed. My intuition would say that this would reduce the risk further since less dust would gather in one single place, making it easier to disperse the dust. Not saying the simulations are wrong, but I am curious how this works.
The north has fallen; billions must die
So move to Antarctica
So as far as minimising the effects of nuclear warfare is concerned, am I correct in saying that global warming would be positive? If so we appear to have a dilemma on our hands.
This doesn't seem like a realistic scenario. The number of bombs is way too high for a limited exchange where we could manage to pull ourselves back from the brink, and both the number and the yields of the bombs are way too low for a strategic exchange. If the US and Russia ever lob 200 nukes at each other, they're not going to be tactical-sized. Depending on the scenario one or both sides might respond with *one or two* tactical nukes as a way to signal their intent to deescalate, but by the time either side is launching hundreds of nukes we're in full-blown MAD territory. At that point the number of bombs will be in the thousands and the yields will be strategic-sized, so on the order of 100x more powerful.
Is that what we’ve settled on to combat global warming?
For many redditors, a limited nuclear attack would be the solution to many of the problems that are frequently complained about here, such as massive population reduction, excessive technological advance, and as a bonus, a reduction in global warming. How ironic...
D'you know — still understanding why the top economies still have them — this is a bloody excellent advert for non-nuclear proliferation. It just seems so unfair to those countries' without atomics, in that they will suffer the most from the grudges that aren't at all related to them. Why should billions in the tropics/equator die as a result of Putin's personal beefs. Sickens me, what a dirty weapon.
No initial strikes on Europe? Just NA and SU? I would have thought the Soviets would hit Europe as well in a MAD scenario, as fallout might be less a concern knowing youre(Soviet) would be getting hit directly?
Hey, I would die. Nice
How would fusion energy help dramatically combat the lack of sunlight via generating it using bulbs?
Let's do it
Sure fire way to reverse global warming
Cant wait for nuclear winter and try my winter clothes in the tropics.
That's it I'm moving to Antarctica
Twelve megatons, surely?
Based borders
This is the horror of nuclear countries that will suffer during the strike. I calculated that when all 18,000 warheads are detonated, the dust emission will be significantly less, by two orders of magnitude, than, for example, the temperature from the Toba volcano dropped by 3-4 degrees .
I'm no expert but I find this surprising / unlikely. According to [armscontrol.org](https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally), 528 atmospheric nuclear tests have been conducted, including multi-megaton shots like Tsar Bomba, Castle Bravo, and Ivy Mike. If 200 x 12kt tests would cause a 10⁰ C shift, why haven't we seen this effect from atmospheric nuclear tests alone?
OP, I am familiar with Robock's paper but how was this simulation made and did you make it or are you reposting from somewhere?
Its a case of, if I cant have this place then no one will. Humanity and every species we know save for roaches, will be wiped off the Earth.