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[guek]

Consider the following:

With how many people we have as a species and how frighteningly numerous nuclear bombs are, the likelihood of an accidental nuclear explosion and subsequent nuclear winter is unsettling high. But I think as a species, we'd survive the worst winters, there's just an absurd number of us on the planet, the likelihood at least one community of people survive for the bare minimum of a few generations would be fairly high. People would be born and die knowing nothing but nuclear winter as their reality.

 

[frontovik]

Sounds like there's no coming back from a nuclear winter due to the radiation lasting centuries.

 

[Mimosa97]

I don't know you tell me.

 

[Diancecht]

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

 

[jwk94]

You should watch the movie Threads.

 

[the_batman]

But I think as a species, we'd survive the worst winters

you can't survive long without food, which there wouldn't be any after a short while.

 

[Javaman]

From what I understand nuclear winter has been largely debunked. The ash blown up from a full nuclear war pales in comparison to a large volcano blowing, especially since nukes are largely set to do air bursts instead of ground bursts. (Much less fallout). This also cuts down on the radiation traveling around the world.

After a couple of weeks you can go outside for increasing amounts of time unless you are near a ground zero.

 

[border]

With how many people we have as a species and how frighteningly numerous nuclear bombs are, the likelihood of an accidental nuclear explosion and subsequent nuclear winter is unsettling high.

A single accidental nuclear explosion is not going to cause a nuclear winter. It's assumed to be the aftermath of many, many explosions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

"The nuclear winter scenario assumes that 100 or more city firestorms are ignited by the nuclear explosions of a nuclear war"

 

[Surface of Me]

Imagine slowly deteriorating away in mind and body very slowly, unnoticeably so. Then one day it all hits you, your brain dont work so good, everything itches and you're skin flakes off. you cant ge t a g r i p

 

[Stopdoor]

the likelihood at least one community of people survive for the bare minimum of a few generations would be fairly high. People would be born and die knowing nothing but nuclear winter as their reality.

People really just pull "likelihood"s out of their butt like Trump, huh?

Like I don't know much about nuclear winter, but if you're gonna start the thread, you could at least back up your analysis with ideas that seem like more than "that's the feeling I get".

 

[Trojita]

Most people would starve to death once food stores are empty. There will be a time with no agricultural food growth.

The nuclear winter wouldn't just effect the temperature, precipitation levels would drop.

 

[echoshifting]

Mmm protein goop

 

[the_batman]

Imagine slowly deteriorating away in mind and body very slowly, unnoticeably so. Then one day it all hits you, your brain dont work so good, everything itches and you're skin flakes off. you cant ge t a g r i p

are you describing turning into a ghoul?

 

[v1lla21]

I don't know but the only way to survive is to eat the booty like groceries.

 

[Smokey_Run]

The concept of nuclear winter would be absolutely devastating and there is a chance we wouldn't survive depending on how long the effects would last. Plant and animal life would die. The ability to live on crops and livestock would cease to exist after a year or so. Could humanity survive three, five, maybe ten years of that? I highly doubt it.

However, nuclear winter caused by nuclear war likely won't happen because of the sheer amount of bombs that would have to go off.

 

[Omadahl]

I'd pray that the initial bombs would vaporize me anyway. I don't want to eat bloatfly meat.

 

[the_batman]

I'd pray that the initial bombs would vaporize me anyway. I don't want to eat bloatfly meat.

you don't need to eat at all, just sleep for an hour.

 

[Altazor]

You should watch the movie Threads.

this, pretty much. By the end of the film, you start to realize that the people who died during the nuclear attack got off easily.

 

[RustyNails]

Nuclear Winter would definitely suck. There is no sunlight to grow crops. Meat is extremely rare because you can only breed so much cattle. And what do you feed the cattle anyway?

I think we all would turn to cannibalism in under a month.

 

[valkillmore]

You should watch the movie Threads.

Fucking terrifying movie. It's on YouTube periodically, sometimes you can find it uploaded there.

Everyone needs to watch this movie. It gets progressively worse and then the ending, which is probably the most shocking ending to any movie I've seen, is not just unexpected but heartbreaking.

Watch this movie.

 

[uncredited male]

Where would the farts go when you are in a bunker?

 

[Rushersauce]

It can't be worse than patrolling the Mojave

 

[antonz]

Heres a pretty good brief section on it. Talks about an ALl out Nuclear War and its effects and a Nuclear War where only 1/3 of the worlds Arsenal was used.

ModelE from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which they noted "has been tested extensively in global warming experiments and to examine the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate." The model was used to investigate the effects of a war involving the entire current global nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 150 Tg of smoke into the atmosphere, as well as a war involving about one third of the current nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 50 Tg of smoke.

In the 150 Tg case they found that:
A global average surface cooling of –7 °C to –8 °C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still –4 °C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about –5 °C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land ... Cooling of more than –20 °C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than –30 °C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions.
In addition, they found that this cooling caused a weakening of the global hydrological cycle, reducing global precipitation by about 45%.

As for the 50 Tg case involving one third of current nuclear arsenals, they said that the simulation "produced climate responses very similar to those for the 150 Tg case, but with about half the amplitude," but that "the time scale of response is about the same." They did not discuss the implications for agriculture in depth, but noted that a 1986 study which assumed no food production for a year projected that "most of the people on the planet would run out of food and starve to death by then" and commented that their own results show that, "This period of no food production needs to be extended by many years, making the impacts of nuclear winter even worse than previously thought."

 

[E-Cat]

Imagine slowly deteriorating away in mind and body very slowly, unnoticeably so. Then one day it all hits you, your brain dont work so good, everything itches and you're skin flakes off. you cant ge t a g r i p

Getting old sure sucks.

 

[univariate]

Imagine slowly deteriorating away in mind and body very slowly, unnoticeably so. Then one day it all hits you, your brain dont work so good, everything itches and you're skin flakes off. you cant ge t a g r i p

I have family members who think this happens when you smoke weed.

 

[Biske]

Heres a pretty good brief section on it. Talks about an ALl out Nuclear War and its effects and a Nuclear War where only 1/3 of the worlds Arsenal was used.

Yup would suck. Would suck a lot.

 

[AlimNassor]

Bad. You might get stuck patrolling the Mojave.

 

[Iolo]

You should watch the movie Threads.

"a cat's skeleton" is the quote I always think of

a world in which the entire human race has crippling PTSD

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

Watch threads.

 

[Xe4]

Humanity is resilient. We'd survive, and have survived disasters of equal proportions earlier in our history (not to mention we lived during the ice age). It would take a cataclysmic event on the scale of the dinosaur extinction to end us.

Billions would die though. Humanity would be left to a few million struggling to survive in any way we could.

Watch threads.

You should watch the movie Threads.

Don't do this if you want to sleep tonight.

 

[KingV]

Nuclear winter was effectively a made up idea and has no basis in science.

Yes nuclear war would be very bad, but it would not cause a nuclear winter.

 

[SwiftDeath]

About a 7

 

[Makonero]

at least it'll cancel out global warming

/futurama

 

[Alucrid]

half of neogaf bought those alpha industry coats so they should be ok

 

[Xe4]

Nuclear winter was effectively a made up idea and has no basis in science.

Yes nuclear war would be very bad, but it would not cause a nuclear winter.

Source. Almost everything I've seen has shown nuclear winter to have a firm basis in science, due to aerosols kicked up due to the blasts.

 

[Javaman]

Heres a pretty good brief section on it. Talks about an ALl out Nuclear War and its effects and a Nuclear War where only 1/3 of the worlds Arsenal was used.

There's many computer models for it but generally as newer ones come out the effect become lessened. Some of the early models were worst case where the attack happened in the spring and ALL burnable material in the effected zones were consumed. The newer models take into consideration newer construction materials that are less likely to contribute to a total fire storm.

 

[KO Traveling Hobo]

might be cool

 

[Iolo]

From what I understand nuclear winter has been largely debunked. The ash blown up from a full nuclear war pales in comparison to a large volcano blowing, especially since nukes are largely set to do air bursts instead of ground bursts. (Much less fallout). This also cuts down on the radiation traveling around the world.

After a couple of weeks you can go outside for increasing amounts of time unless you are near a ground zero.

Nuclear winter is about gigatons of ash rising into the atmosphere from hundreds of city-wide firestorms. It is not about radiation or fallout. Some have hypothesized that modern MIRVs are targeted in a particular circular pattern to deliberately promote such firestorms, but the answer is not in the open literature.

Nuclear winter was effectively a made up idea and has no basis in science.

Yes nuclear war would be very bad, but it would not cause a nuclear winter.

nuclear winter is a hoax created by the chinese

 

[Abstrusity]

Most people would die quickly, and the rest would slowly begin to die out as the lack of food, potable water, radiation sickness, rioting, looting, murderape -- portmanteaus are fun! -- and so on.

So, uh.

I mean, it wouldn't suck so much for the people that died quickly, I suppose. Suffering is relative, as always.

 

[Javaman]

Nuclear winter is about gigatons of ash rising into the atmosphere from hundreds of city-wide firestorms. It is not about radiation or fallout. Some have hypothesized that modern MIRVs are targeted in a particular circular pattern to deliberately promote such firestorms, but the answer is not in the open literature.



nuclear winter is a hoax created by the chinese

Read my post two posts up. Recent models don't show major cities becoming firestorms. Older ones also underestimated the effect of rain clearing the soot.

 

[GK86]

Watch the documentary 'Hell Comes to Frogtown.'

 

[PrivateWHudson]

Didn't older models factor in more trees and forests? Heard something recently that cities don't burn too well, and with city limits expanding, not enough trees will catch fire to create a nuclear winter. Not many rural areas are targets.

 

[Vault Dweller 111]

Some

 

[Freshmaker]

you can't survive long without food, which there wouldn't be any after a short while.

Historically, there have been similar events. Sun blocked by ash/debris for years at a time. We're still here despite those volcanoes and comet strikes etc.

Does go to show what wimps the dinosaurs were tho.

 

[always crazy bacon]

It would be very very bad. I don't think we will last for long.

 

[Kevtones]

my heating bill sucked

 

[NoblesseOblige]

A minor inconvenience for the fantastic result of some humans developing superpowers.

 

[Mario]

I'd like to think New Zealand was pretty safe but then the worlds greenhouse gases have decided to gather above us for decades giving us the thinnest protection from the sun in the whole planet.

Think we'll be good for a zombie apocalypse though.

 

[Electric Eye]

Historically, there have been similar events. Sun blocked by ash/debris for years at a time. We're still here despite those volcanoes and comet strikes etc.

Does go to show what wimps the dinosaurs were tho.

That's because the story about them dying of cold and starvation has been dropped, new models shows that everything burned to death withing 2 hours of the impact. It wasn't a gradual die off everything got killed fast.

Here listen to this nifty radiolab story I heard heard on NPR http://www.radiolab.org/story/dinopocalypse/

 

[KingV]

Source. Almost everything I've seen has shown nuclear winter to have a firm basis in science, due to aerosols kicked up due to the blasts.

https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/88spp.html

This is a fairly level headed discussion. Nuclear winter has SOME basis in science, but there are a ton of assumptions in the models that may or may not be true. It's tricky because most of the sources have an agenda to make it look as bad as possible or downplay it as much as possible depending on the source. I look down upon it partially because of Paul Ehrlichs involvement. He's basically been predicting cataclysmic human extinction level events since the 60's, and yet here we all still sit. He's big on predicting catastrophe, but low on predicting it accurately.

I think the climate models are probably more or less accurate given the assumptions, but there is a lot of question of if the idea of if a nuclear firestorm is really plausible in a modern city that is mostly made of concrete, metal, and glass. And the amount of particulate basically relies on worst possible assumptions here. As far as I know, there hasn't been a firestorm in a city in 60 or so years, so it seems they are at least not so common anymore, when they did exist in the more wooden cities during WWII and several fires in the early 20th century.

FEMA seems to think this is unlikely in modern American cities, as of 2010
Https://www.remm.nlm.gov/PlanningGuidanceNuclearDetonation.pdf