Direct and long-term effects of a modern nuclear war/attack

victor

victor

Antediluvian as Feck
Orderite
[I didn't really know where to post this, I hope it's here. Also, if this topic has been done to the death, I'm sorry, haven't been here that long. :oops: ]


I've been doing a lot of research about nuclear weapons and post-apocalyptic scenarios lately, mostly using American declassified government documents and films, found on the net. Although I found LOTS of stuff, I'm still unsure about the effects of a nuclear attack on the environment, organic material and infrastructure, at the time of the strike, an hour after , a day, a week, a year, a century, and so on. This is mostly due to propaganda and the diversity of and often inaccurate information you find on the Internet.

Most of the information I got was public info from the 50's ("Duck and cover"):http://www.conelrad.com/atomicsecrets/secrets.php?secrets=00 , but I managed to find some information about the short-term and instantaneous effects of a modern nuclear attack (multi-megaton bombs): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/blastmap.html.

Some things mentioned were that an Air blast was more destructive (but less radiative) than a Surface blast (I had always thought the contrary). I was also surprised that Nuclear weapons, even of such caliber, weren't as destructive as I had previously thought them to be. This is all very interesting, but some of this information is confusing.

A small detail, but still very fascinating, is the nuclear cannon: http://www.vce.com/grable.html (there are some movie clips if you scroll down). I was previously completely unaware of such a thing, a nuclear weapon useable in the direct battlefield. Although the idea was scrapped soon after and it was never put to use, the whole concept of such a thing is still a bit like science fiction to me, and nonetheless frightening (I plan to have such a weapon in the mod I'm going to make, for you who read my previous thread about the HL2 mod in the gaming forum).



A lot of the information I found about the post-nuclear world as imagined in the 50's was scrapped in later texts, such as this one: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19860...n-h-schneider/nuclear-winter-reappraised.html (hope link works). But as propaganda isn't much less common today as it was back then, and the fact that I am viciously suspicious when it comes to military and war-related publications, this seems a little "Oh lets send out some reassuring nuclear propaganda just in time when Regean is trying to disarm the Soviets and that the cold war is almost over", so it confuses me.


I guess what i'm really asking is for the forumers who are familiar with post-apocalyptic theories and fiction, to clarify the information I found :help: (after all, you're easier to trust than an already written text I suppose). The direct effects of the nuclear blast with shockwaves and all are pretty clear already (even though less destructive than I had thought), although an estimate of the number of casualties in the whole world in case of a full-scale nuclear war would be nice, as I haven't been able to find any.

What I really need to know is details about the nuclear winter (is there one? How long is it? How cold does it get?) :eyebrow:. Then, I would appreciate realistic and accurate info about the really post apocalyptic world, such as the one in Fallout (with a wasteland), but without the science fiction (would the world look like that at all? After a century (Fallout)? After millenia? What would be the overall global situation of the environment and the atmosphere? After how long would the world be habitable?) I know I seem to be asking a lot, but any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
 
To be quite honest more people would die in the aftermath, than in an actual war. Think about this, all you need to do is hit your enemies energy production, and communications centers with nice and dirty Plutonium groundbursts, and watch that society fall apart from starvation and disease. As this is a planet that is supporting more people with scientific methods than could be supported without them. You break down the energy production, Food and medicine production grinds to a halt, and blam within 30 days, mass starvation, death, then the worst part, disease. As it has been said before, "the living shall envy the dead." The most precious commodities in a post apocalypse environment would be food, and most of all medicine. Most people do not realise how many REALLY nasty diseases are held at bay by modern medicines. Bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, and a host of other just as nasty bugs, that modern man no longers has any resistance to, thanks to modern medicines. After about 5 years t could honestly forsee a worldwide population of about 4 to 5 hundred million left out of 6+ billion due to starvation and disease. All in all a not real good situation.

Cheers Thorgrimm
 
now dont forget the dust aspect, if any number of nuclear weopons were to go off, massive amounts of debree and dust laced with fallout would be ejected into the air.
if you set off enought you will block out the suns rays and catapult us into nuclear winter, plant life would die off within a week animals a short time later....... :evil:
 
Bob i think you need to do a little more reading on the subject, and not more politicized propaganda. As what you have posted is patently untrue. Sure some plants will die , but not all plants. and even if we as a species do nuke our selves into extinction, there will always be life on this planet till something worse than man hits it.


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
NUCLEAR WINTER AND OTHER MYTHS OF SELF-DETERRENCE [[[[[[
By Eugene G. Zutell 06/19/88
Arizona Dept. of Emergency and Military Affairs
Division of Emergency Services


When Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates, Drs. Turco, Toon, Ackermann
and Pollack announced their nuclear winter theory to the world in the
fall of 1983, they received such an incredible amount of publicity for
such an extended period of time that they managed to convince many
people that in the event of a nuclear war, nuclear winter would be a
reality. Unfortunately, those who disputed the nuclear winter theory
have received very little publicity. Without going into great detail,
let's look at just a few of the more glaring discrepancies in the
theory. It is based on their assumption that a large quantity of
smoke will be emitted into the atmosphere by burning cities and
forests. Sagan and associates estimate that following a nuclear ex-
change, approximately 225 million tons of smoke particles, generated
by a baseline 5000 megaton exchange, will be injected into the tropo-
sphere and, over a period of two weeks, will be evenly distributed
around the globe in the northern hemisphere. During the following
weeks and months, this smoke will cause a temperature increase at the
tropopause as it absorbs the radiant energy of the sun and conse-
quently blocks that energy from reaching the surface of the earth.
Surface temperatures on the continents in the northern hemisphere,
between latitudes 30 degrees north and 70 degrees north, might drop as
low as -30 degrees Celsius. The theory does not however, consider the
highly relevant question of how much smoke will actually remain aloft
after two weeks. Normal meteorological processes, rain, snow,
temperature differentials between land masses and the oceans, etc.,
are not factored into the nuclear winter theory by Sagan et al. Stu-
dies of the discharge rates of manmade and natural smoke and observa-
tions of the average amounts of smoke found in the atmosphere, done
prior to and since the promulgation of the nuclear winter theory, have
shown that smoke particles have an average residence time of one week
or less. And, the average residence time of water vapor in the atmo-
sphere is little longer than a week. The amount of atmospheric water
vapor in tons, in the northern latitudes exceeds the 225 million tons
of smoke postulated by Sagan and his associates by a factor of at
least ten thousand. It is therefore fairly obvious that in seven to
ten days, which is before the theoretical initiation of the widespread
cooling effect, an amount of water far greater than the weight of
smoke generated by the nuclear exchange, will rain out of the atmo-
sphere and in doing so, will have an obviously significant cleansing
effect. Couple this with the commonly demonstrated fact that smoke
and dust particles injected into the atmosphere spontaneously create
rain conditions, by themselves being the locus around which water
molecules coalesce until they form rain droplets. This phenomena is
frequently demonstrated over forest fires in the form of capping
clouds which develop over columns of smoke. The clouds consist of
smoke particles and water vapor, generated by the fire, that combine
with water molecules already in the atmosphere. The resultant water
droplets in turn capture more particles as they ascend from the fire.
Even before they are large enough to form rain, their increasing size
reduces dramatically, the number of smoke and dust particles in the
size range that is most effective in absorbing and scattering sun-
light. Historical records describe a black rain that fell within a
few hours after the explosion of the nuclear weapon over Hiroshima.
That rain was the first manifestation of the atmosphere cleansing
itself after the sudden injection of an abnormal amount of smoke and
dust particles.
To enumerate some other problems with the nuclear winter mechanism:
1. The cooling mechanism as Sagan and associates describe it, could
only operate over land masses. Ocean surface water is continually
supplied with heat from below. Even if sunlight were blocked for many
months, the temperature at the ocean surface would remain virtually
unchanged. Consequently, weather patterns would continue, with warm
moisture laden air from the oceans sweeping over the land masses and
as it cools, rain clouds would form and even more of the sun blocking
smoke and dust particles would be washed out of the atmosphere. 2.
Sagan et al indicated that at the very least, 100 million tons of
smoke particles would have to be injected into the atmosphere if the
nuclear winter mechanism were to be triggered. They also indicated
that cities are the primary source of that smoke. They therefore
proposed a nuclear war scenario in which cities are the primary tar-
gets. Since the mid 1960s, the primary targets for both U.S. and
Soviet nuclear missiles and nuclear bombs have not been population
centers or cities. They have been the other guy's nuclear missile
launch sites, nuclear bomber bases and other military targets. If
those can be eliminated, the cities will be held hostage. The current
list of ten target classes ascribed to Soviet planners by DOD and
FEMA, does not specifically contain any population centers. The list
does of course include target classes that in many instances will be
located in or adjacent to metropolitan areas. But, even in those
instances, the nuclear weapons employed will not be the huge multi-
megaton area destruction bombs of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
ICBM systems and MIRVs are now so accurate that a target may be pin-
pointed even within a metropolitan area, by a relatively small weapon.
This is not in any way to say that the effects will not be catastro-
phic. It is to say though that the city wide firestorms necessary for
the onset of nuclear winter as described by Sagan and associates, are
less than predictable.

Edited by me as i forgot to add the header on 03/10/04 1530 hrs
Cheers Thorgrimm
 
Yeah and you could have edited it into several parts, chapters, paragraphs, whatever. Got kinda hard to read after a while. Also, consider this scenario:

There are several multi-megaton blasts (both airbursts and groundbursts) on the East coast of the United States (i.e between Boston and Washington, somewhere in that area).

You're saying that in this area, considering the proximity to the ocean, there would be no nuclear winter, as all the particles will be "washed away by nature". But isn't the "washing away" dangerous? I doubt the rain is very healthy, as it contains radiactive particles, radiated soil and whatnot (acid rain?). Wouldn't that be a destructive factor in itself? I believe such an event would kill most life on the surface, hence severely altering the climate. Reasearch about the greenhouse effect and global warming would be useful to explain this. I'll check it out.

Also, your text mentioned that military targets would be the primary objective of a nuclear attack. But,

1. If the attacker used mutli-megaton bombs (let's just suppose he does), wouldn't it be overkill and hence strategically unnecessary and foolish to use them on small missile silos, where there is nearly no human activity?

2. The East coast would probably be a primary target, as the economic and political capitals are located there. Wouldn't it then serve the attacker better to attack these targets? And also, if there are major military targets there, and the attacker still used multi-megaton bombs (let's suppose it's still the 50's or 60's here), wouldn't the sheer population and infrastructure density be a reason for major destruction?
 
Ok I looked into all that, and it would seem (I think) that a full-blown nuclear war à la Cold war would first cause major global warming, and then the Earth would cool down (unless all the greenhouse gases are destroyed by airbursts, and the Earth cools down right away instead).

*edit* Also, how long after the war do you think the Earth would look like a radioactive wasteland/desert (much like the one in Fallout)?
 
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