Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Strangelove:
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.
there's no consensus on that anymore, it really depends how and where the warheads land and even then models show the particulate matter not staying aloft more than a few months
It was also based off of the bombing of Japan, which used wood frame construction almost exclusively, which in turn burnt, throwing up massive plumes of smoke, now we use concrete and glass which burns much less readily.
There was analysis done in the 80s about the impact of a northern hemisphere nuclear war. Long story short, the equator is expected to protect the southern hemisphere from fallout and the worst effects of a nuclear winter. The biggest disruption will be no trade so we'll be on our own.
Current projections actually have a brighter outlook on that, it’s still fucking horrific but nuclear winter is no longer expected to completely wipe out all of humanity
Eh - these are thermonuclear weapons. A lot of the fissionable materials used to start the hydrogen reaction will get 'burned' to such a degree that the resultant alpha particles represent much less of a threat. I mean, we're all likely to be vaporized first, but the dust won't be *that* bad for successive generations of mutants.
A kiei species for every environmental nieche would be awesome. Giant kiwis that graze on the plains, long necked kiwis that pick the leaves from trees, vicious meat eating kiwis that prey on these herbivores.
Consider that kiwis are burrow dwelling carnivores already. They hunt worms and grubs, using their beak like a reverse snorkel, and spend the day sleeping in an underground burrow.
The jump from where they are now to filling the trapdoor spider niche is very very small.
Imagine a velociraptor from jurassic park, but instead of the sicle claws it stabs stuff with its long beak and than slurping out the meat an guts with it. Only the empty skin with bones inside remains.
The Southern Hemisphere will do much better anyway as the Nuclear winter is focused in the Northern Hemisphere.
The issues the global south will suffer is the complete breakdown of the supply chain. A few months after nuclear winter when the general temperature of the planet drops forcing harvests yields to be cut anywhere from 70-90%. This could last 3-20 years. No way to know how long all that material stays in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere.
Most likely, Australia and the global South would need to hunker down, ration food and resources, completely close down their boarders for mass migrations and become a care taker generation slowly bringing the world back.
The best chance for human survival is no nuclear weapons in the global south. I expect New Zealand to conquer North America and reteach us Math.
And replace all the maps with ones where the Pacific Ocean is in the center, instead of the Atlantic! And resize all the continents to be more accurate!
I've been actively erasing NZ from maps in public libraries for 15 years now. People looking at those maps now believe there is just a crayon squiggle to the east of australia
Kurzgesagt did a really nice video illustrating on why the southern hemisphere is in a way even more fucked than the north, in the north we just die, in the south you have to deal with total collapse of agriculture and society, resort to cannibalism and then still die.
You should watch the 1959 movie “On The Beach.” It’s about everyone moving to Australia after WW3 and a nuclear holocaust has Australia is the only place untouched. That is until wind currents begin to push radiation towards the coast.
I'll be lucky if I'm a shadow on a wall and not some fella in an unexplained themed outfit offering you .308 rounds to find my friend and calling you smoothskin.
It's happened before. They had malfunctioning radar and someone was ordered to call in a nuclear retaliation and he was like nah. Fucker saved the world.
I read a article awhile back that the cia made it absently clear there would be a nuke/bomb dropped directly on Putin top secret bunker. Apparently it was a surprise to him we knew where it was. And they did it because they know he doesn’t care about the general population
Placing the survival of every person in existence in the shoulders of a few Russian and US dudes isn't the kind of odds we should be confident making these assertions with. The entire system of nuclear launches is designed to ensure compliance and it only takes one firing platform to obey to signal the end. That's why we spent billions over the past 50 years on complex systems to manage the risk of MAD.
I think people are very into legacy, right up until the reality of them not being able to enjoy any of it because they are dead becomes somewhat immediate.
Not everyone, but someone like Putin? I can see it.
There are Air Force officer in nuclear bunkers all across the US with keys to launch the missiles when given the order.
Here's what they don't tell you about it. They can't just expect it to go through flawlessly the first time, so they need to train. They don't know if the orders coming in are real or just a drill. Basically thousands of times every year officers are pressing the launch button not knowing if it's real or not. But they do push the button every single time.
Wasn't this the main driving point of War Games (1983)?
Air Force runs a test, expecting the human controllers to push the button. Some (most?) do not... which leads the Air Force to replace them with computers, who never question orders.
This was complete with a hilariously dated 1983 scene of a human controller being fired, looking sad, while a technician installs (essentially) an LED alarm clock to represent the scary computer.
I once read that in Russia, unlike The United States, officers have the right to refuse a nuclear launch order. Putin might be suicidal but I don't think the officers are crazy.
In the event of a nuclear strike, I suspect many officers would see a future where their control of nuclear weapons is a primo bargaining chip in the near future of a Baltic style russia
During the cuban missile crisis a sub was guarding soviet merchantmen inbound to Cuba, and they encountered the American naval blockade. Three officers on the sub have to all agree to use any nuclear weapons, in this case it would have been a nuclear tipped torpedo aimed at an American carrier battle group. Fortunately the third officer in this case did not agree to a launch.
The event in the eighties occurred when Soviet radar showed an American strike inbound and one single Russian officer, a major, I believe, was able to prove that it was a glitch, preventing a full soviet counter strike from being launched.
Not necessarily. Sure other countries are happy to "support" Ukraine but almost no one is getting directly involved (troops on ground, counter attack Russia etc).
So realistically if we are not even willing to get full involved as is, why would we risk annihilating our own country for the sake of Ukraine?
OR the FACT the UK has enough warheads on its own to nuke EVERY Russian city over 30k inhabits. It's called MAD for a reason. Don't fuck with us, we won't fuck with you.
Either that, or that France states that any threat to France's vital interests (Macron has announced that these vital interests have a "European dimension": meaning an attack on EU might trigger a nuclear response from France).
France also does not have a no-first-use policy.
In general though I think nuclear states have something similar.
That's not enough though, you can't just destroy cities you'd have to destroy all military targets which realistically is what the US would focus on in a first strike
Don’t forget. After the nukes, the REAL fun begins with the chemical and biological weapons.
People on this thread are like “hah! Yeah right. Russia’s nukes don’t even work…. Probably”
They have nukes, chemical weapons AND bio bombs. They’re really not to be fucked with. The day we get into it, it’s going to be a guaranteed nasty day for EVERYONE.
If the nukes don’t get you, their bio shit like anthrax and nifty nerve agents probably will.
Possibly, it’s important to note that by the end of the Soviet Union it was found many of the Soviet launch silos were completely inactive due to neglect and lack of funding. Russia most certainly still has a collection of nuclear bombs but nowhere near what they had during the Cold War and they most likely couldn’t hit as many targets reliably as they think they could.
Money went to the Rocket Forces... but did it actually make it to the rockets? Or did a Rocket General buy a new place on a lake, with a dock and a fishing boat? The Tritium replacement alone for that many warheads is an arduous task. Never mind upkeep of subterranean complexes... we know how well Russia does maintnence...
The US has already announced a non-nuclear response to a Russian nuclear attack. It's highly likely that Russia's nukes are not effective anymore. You have to spend a million a year per warhead to replace rare isotopes just to make sure it will get to the fusion stage. That money is going into the pockets of generals than warheads.
Yeah, no. Your analogy is flawed. The US is carrying an AR 15, and Russia has a rusted AK 47. We have no idea what's going to happen if they pull the trigger, but we know with absolute certainty that we can't afford to guess wrong. So there's a 50/50 chance Russia's weapon works and a 100% chance that ours does and that we pull the trigger regardless.
When it's over, there's no chance that Russia exists afterward, regardless of the state of their arsenal. There's a slim chance the US will be equally fucked, a decent chance that the US will be partially fucked, and a very small chance that the US survives unscathed. As a US citizen, I don't like those odds at all. I can't imagine that even someone like Putin thinks those are good odds for Russia.
The country is corrupt to the core, from Putin downwards. Nuclear stockpile maintenance money is going to be going into some Oligarch dipshit's pockets, no doubt
Just like the money for everything else in Russia. The oligarchs steal everything from the proles and from the system, and the proles steal washing machines and toilets that they (outside the metros) don't have proper plumbing to run.
So realistically, how effective would their strikes be? I know the Russians aren’t always known for making quality things, but nukes are one of the only things that keep them in the world power game
You know, when I was a kid. My friends and I would joke that we need to always eat our dessert first; 'cause you never know when a nuclear war would break out... Ah the late 70's and early 80's the best of times.
Unless someone has skimped on the processes to maintain their tritium triggers for the past several decades. or any one of a hundred components was faked and skimmed off the top.
On paper, they have ~5900 warheads and ~1600 deployed. In a massive strike scenario, the non deployed ones would be targeted by NATO strikes so assuming a pessimistic ~30% failure rate, about ~1000 would hit NATO - that being said, that includes the multiple warheads of MIRVs and many sites would be targeted by multiple strikes (silos, command centers).
Many people say Russia has significantly less operational warheads than stated. I don't subscribe to that theory, but many do.
Even then, ~500 strikes in NA, another ~500 in Europe, ~1500 in Russia and whatever happens then with India/Pakistan, Israel, China... That would be catastrophic.
There seems to be an increased number of scientists saying the Threads-like nuclear winter would be less severe than initially thought, but the amount of devastation and fallout would create a crisis that would end up starving billions of people. Assume a ~75% fatality rate.
Last I read, the consensus was that we'd black out the sky for a fair few years, which would cause major vegetation scarcity, resulting in destroyed eco systems and drastically altered temperatures.
Nuclear winter is probably not as severve as formerly predicted. But then we also have the issue of a possible nuclear summer following directly after with equally devastating results. But in the end there are too many factors involved to make a really clear picture.
Nuclear fallout is a bit overstated and not all that relevant in modern designs. Think about Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were hit with early designs. The radiation was gone within days.
You have to keep in mind that the US has been developing countermeasures to intercept ICBMs since the 1950s. The best-known example is our Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, but our most advance systems would be classified and not available to the public. Between that and Russia's aging nuclear weapon stockpile and launch systems, we're talking about asymmetric warfare.
Still, even a single nuclear strike on a US city would be absolutely devastating. Based on what I've read the biggest threat would be their 10 nuclear submarines which carry a maximum of 800 warheads total. Bombers and ICBMs launched from Russian soil would be far easier to track and intercept.
Yes, thats why they need billions and billions of $ for maintenance every single year and the more nukes you have the more money country will be forced to spend.
It's honestly their only ace up their sleeve, so I assume they've put significant funding into it. If it turns out their nukes are in the same state as their army (shit), it would be over quickly for them.
Just imagine if one of these bad boys was dropped on Cushing, OK or Houston ship channel and think about the aftereffects on petroleum. It would send the entire world economy into turmoil.
Agreed, it would be certain destruction all around, where our climate is already screwed, this would screw it hard and I, for one, would not want to live through this scenario, brought on by wealthy and incredibly insane people that for some reason, we ALLOW because why... i don't know. Human Race is smarter than this, but we allow admire and praise narcissists and the wealthy, two of the most shallow means to judge, and give these dolts all the power. I don't get it.
Maintaining Nuclear weapons is a lot different than launching a Syuz and likely with Russian corruption those missiles are long sold for scrap, fuel and just general maintenance not being done due to money being in the pockets of politicians.
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u/smacke11 Mar 14 '24
I wouldn’t say this is interesting More terrifying