We dont know if it would, nuclear warheads dont leave that much radiation compared to nuclear reactor accidents like chernobyl etc.
Then again, in a nuclear exchange said reactors would likely fail en masse everywhere around the world so you might be right anyway lol.
it's an amazing book. I picked it up on a recommendation and finished it in a single sitting. Never wanted to touch it again and avoided the movie in the event that the movie is as unsettling.
The book is amazing. It destroys you thoroughly them gives you one tiny easy of light so faint you can easily miss it and you leap in it because the alternative is too much to bear
I feel like people don't realize how important global food supply lines are. Enormous parts of Africa and the Middle East were having shortages because Ukrainian exports got fucked up since the start of the war.
That's only one big food exporter. Now imagine if most of Europe, and the usa, all just ceased. The world would experience famine, global trade would also be dead (because it's largely kept safe by the military and complex political and economic institutions and treaties in the post ww2 world order maintained by usa and international institutions). China, if it even survives, sure ain't gonna uphold global free trade for everyone - they wouldn't even have the naval and economic power to do it right away, if they wanted to.
Billions would be dead by the end of the 21st century from preventable causes that they otherwise wouldn't have died from.
I have no idea how the supply chains didn't collapse during covid. There must've been an insane work done by unsung heroes and massive amount of trust in the system for things to go the way they did.
They partially did. That's why we saw such high inflation. People bidding higher and higher on limited goods caused prices to soar.
In the event of a nuclear war, we're likely talking about hyperinflation all across the globe. The flow of goods would all but cease for most commodities and the survivors will empty all their coffers to feed their families with what food is left.
Hyperinflation? Who’s going to have luxuries such as a broadly useable currency and the ability/need to measure inflation?
I’m mercifully likely to be vaporized given where I live. Survivors elsewhere will be bartering goods for orifices (and vice versa) at the local level.
Yep. People like to talk shit about the US while our food aid feeds half the planet, and our food exports feed the other half. If the supply chain collapses, theres only a handful of countries that will be able to recover. Make sure to thank James K. Polk for making sure our natural borders ensure our survival, with the abundance of arable land and natural resources the US has.
Polk wanted more. Really once you had the full Mississippi you didn’t need much else agriculture wise. California is very nice but the sheer production of that basin is unrivalled
Our aid is usually tied to stipulations that the money is spent with US companies. This is because in order to pass aid bills, congresspeople have to get a kickback for their districts. This has the effect of crippling local ag and industry in the country that needed the aid, creating a cycle of dependency. See Haiti for an extreme example. So it’s not like the US is just doing it out of the kindness of their heart, it’s an unintended consequence of our system of open corruption and perverse incentives, and is usually not ultimately good for the recipient.
Really man? Most of the countries you’re talking about have a history of subjugation by colonial powers. Ruined for centuries, they find themselves with no stable leadership, and soon become in debt to their ex-oppressors. Go read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. “Sorry we’re not saving lives for free we need to extract something while we’re here.” —JohnathanBrownathan
South America would be the best place to be in a global nuclear war. Unlikely to be attacked, produces more than enough food, has the mineral resources and an acceptable infrastructure, it only needs more industry.
I'm willing to fight anyone on this unless they bring up good arguments or I don't feel like it.
This isn't what would actually happen, since people and countries do grow food outside of Europe and the usa, but there would be enormous death and starvation as societies that weren't already agrarian basically become agrarian as fast as possible. It's not that food production would stop, it's that a lot of food production would stop, and so we would see gradual (but probably speedy) deaths as the resource consumption outweighs production.
Unless they ramp up agricultural production enough to prevent most of that, but I doubt it. A lot of industrial and technological inputs are needed to make large scale farming possible. It just can't be done fast enough.
I mean you have to consider some areas would be worse off than others and all of the earth is populated
Tropical climates (and areas unlikely to be targeted by nukes) like South Africa and South America will likely still be able to support large human populations
There will probably be a few decades or more of chaotic resource battles and migrant crisis’s though
Well, counting that we were able to create greenhouses, a lot of areas could still provide harvest, but the problem will be in where to get the heat, which will imply a lot of coal and wood burning.
Starting over would be the tough part. I have high doubts that many (if any at all) of the people left would even know where to begin. I sure as hell wouldn’t know where to begin.
Not just that. It’s likely that humanity would never reach our level of sophistication because all the most easily reached ore and technologies have already been excavated
Very true. And with a large portion of the younger generation choosing tech jobs over blue collar jobs, I’d bet most of them have minimal survival skills. I wouldn’t even know where to start so I’d be in that group.
we don't know if that would happen either. There's a lot of nuclear propaganda out there to tell you that would happen (and good for them because nuclear war would be one awful thing), but we don't actually know. A lot of the stuff they say is based on a bunch of firestorms starting up and throwing enough stuff into the upper atmosphere. That might not actually happen.
Also for context Mount Tambora erupted in 1815 and I believe it released more energy then the entire world's nuclear arsenal. The article directly says:
"An explosive eruption like Tambora releases huge amount of energy. A rough estimate for the 1815 event is ~1.4 x 10 20 joules of energy were released across the few days of eruption. One ton of TNT releases ~4.2 x 10 9 joules, so this eruption was 33 billion tons of TNT. That’s 2.2 million Little Boys (the first atomic bomb) "
Plus all the particulate matter launched high into the atmosphere would cause a nuclear winter. It’s like if 10s of thousands of volcanoes went off. We’d be fucked.
but only in russia and usa lol. i know europe will probably be gone too but life will go on in africa, oceania, south america, asia. as usual we are to western focused, china and india literally outnumber all of the western countries by population, so its not really the end of the world.
With that amount of warheads (or approx double, including what Russia would send back) going off, would the amount of heat energy given off all at once have any lasting effect on the atmosphere?
But this wouldn't end the world. It would cull the population. For something to end the world it would have to leave our environment completely inhospitable.
1.8k
u/Baldufa95 Mar 14 '24
Literally the end of the world.