How much would a nuclear winter suck?

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Nuclear winter from what I understand isn't a very likely scenario.

Most nuclear warheads are airburst, which are meant to 'strike' the largest area possible while not actually kicking up all that much ground debris.

For an idea of how a nuclear war might impact everyday people however, watch a movie called Threads.
 
Don't think it would suck any more or less than being one of the poor bastards caught in the thermonuclear shockwave

I don't really think a nuclear winter is required in order to wipe out extra millions/billions though. The resulting infrastructure collapse from the carnage that would be suspected to cause it will likely do the job for you.
 
I think some of what could limit the possible effect is simply the advancement of the bombs themselves. When Nuclear Winter was developed as a concept it was projected to need 1000 targets hit with 15kt bombs to create the firestorms projected for global nuclear winter.

A Single Trident II with a full load of W88 Warheads can reach the equivalent destructive power as roughly 444 15kt bombs. The need to target hundreds or even thousands of targets are over. A Single Ohio Class Sumbarime could fire off the equal to 7,093 Hiroshima bombs as far as firepower goes and that would be at 224 targets potentially
 
PrivateWHudson said:
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.
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Depends... why take out major cities when you can decimate 2-3 important ones, then simply lay waste across the Midwest and eliminate food supplies and aquifers for decades to come. The cities and major populations not bombed would collapse in no time, and the smaller rural areas couldn't recover quickly enough to support society the way we're accustomed to, or even what was the norm back in the 18th century.
 
In all apocalyptic scenarios (asteroid, nuclear war, mega-volcano) I would say we average gaffers have little to no chance to survive, but as a species sure, I see some people surviving.
 
How much atmospheric mixing is there between the northern and southern hemispheres? Because it seems like most of the action and thus most of the ash would be restricted to the northern hemisphere (NA, Europe, Asia) giving those folks in the southern hemisphere a better shot at survival.
 
guek said:
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.
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Nobody knows because niclear winter is just a theory. The threat of nuclear war isn't really all that high. We don't have any serious enemies to begin with, much less enemies who are far enough gone to try it.
 
Angry Grimace said:
Nobody knows because niclear winter is just a theory. The threat of nuclear war isn't really all that high. We don't have any serious enemies to begin with, much less enemies who are far enough gone to try it.
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Many of the key players in US foreign policy going back to and including Kissinger are on the record in recent years stating that the risk is higher now due to the erosion of the simple 1v1 deterrence scenario (US/USSR) which framed the Cold War. Also proliferation, terrorism , etc. - to say nothing of the traditional critiques of nuclear deterrence theory.
 
guek said:
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.
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Nuclear winter probably would not happen. At most we would face a nuclear autumn.

1) Every model they had back then used firestorm on every city. There is no solid proof every major cities would burn to create firestorms. I guess some forest fires do as much smoke.
2) Nukes today are smaller and more precise. They would be used as air bursts, which produce less debris. Since the yields are smaller than 15-20 years ago (there are no 10MT bombs anymore), the ashes would not reach the stratosphere. Just compare the mushrooms clouds from 800kt/1mt bombs to 10 mt. Old models used ground bursts.
3) Remember the Kuwait Fires? Sagan (which I do admire) predicted major climate change for the region. Didn't happen, because the atmosphere as a way to protect and regulate itself, with rain & wind.
4) Volcanoes are much more powerful than our tiny bombs. Krakatoa ejecta was approx 19 cube km!!! And the could went 55km high in the atmo. And the effects of this were mild and lasted a year or 2. How many bombs you need to replicate that? Note : Krakatoa was a "small" explosion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

There are politics involved in this debate. Freeman Dyson said it correctly, the science of nuclear winter is pretty bad, but how do you defend the idea of nuclear war? You don't.

All in all in could change or end our civilization, maybe, but not humanity, and definitly not life. The Earth and life on it survived much, much worse.
 
Trojita said:
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.
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With so many dead from the war and radiation sickness that follows, disease would take a huge toll on whatever survivors there were... if you unlucky enough to survive all that, you'd live to see yourself and children die slowly of starvation and adversity while trying to scrape together a subsistence existence off the corpse of the old world. Personally, I'll take living in a nice apartment at ground zero.
 
It would suck but our species would survive. We were born during the height of the last Ice Age. If we could survive living on/near glaciers we would survive a nuclear winter. It would still suck though.
 
Blue Submarine No. 6 said:
With so many dead from the war and radiation sickness that follows, disease would take a huge toll on whatever survivors there were... if you unlucky enough to survive all that, you'd live to see yourself and children die slowly of starvation and adversity while trying to scrape together a subsistence existence off the corpse of the old world. Personally, I'll take living in a nice apartment at ground zero.
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Again, realistically with air bursts, radiation and nuclear fallout will be extremely small and minimal, while the actual destruction is far greater.

Ground burst = more radiation and fallout, less total destruction
Air burst = more total destruction, less fallout
 
I don't think the problem would be to grow food, but to distribute it.

The infrastructures would be destroyed, the problem would come from there first.

People would not just let themselves die without a fight tough. That's not how we are made.
 
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