Greetings from Post-Apocalyptic Internet Radio

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frequency2156

First time out of the vault
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Hi there!

Wanted to inform you all about this!

We have started a community based Post-Apocalyptic Internet radio called Frequency 2156 in which anyone can publish content. Frequency 2156 follows a post-apocalyptic story from the year 2156 which all content must follow.

http://www.frequency2156.com

to learn more, please read the F.A.Q
http://www.frequency2156.com/faq

On the site you can:

Listen to the radio
http://www.frequency2156.com/radio

Browse single radio messages from the Message World Map and send radio messages
http://www.frequency2156.com/list/messages

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Browse single requests from the Request World Map and send radio message requests
http://www.frequency2156.com/list/requests

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We have also a community forum for discussion. Here's a little something about the story

"This is a digital radio broadcast from the year 2156. We have managed to build a time lapse feedback device which we can use to send a simple digital audio signal back to the past. We are from the former Scandinavian region, Finland. Video signal of any kind is impossible to broadcast with our technology.

We cannot be sure if this signal ever reaches the early 21st century. In the year 2156 world will be destroyed by almost twenty years long nuclear-fusion war. Almost all animals shall die and almost every human being will be dead. There will be no civilizations left, only some small groups of survivors. If this frequency reaches your time, please inform your politicians and policymakers about the coming thread!

We broadcast this frequency and publish this HTML-markup site in our time as well to gather information about the survivors and in order to start a new civilization. Please prevent the war. We truly hope that your actions will make a change in our time."

And of course, I'm Miikka, the founder of the Frequency 2156. I'm from Finland and love anything involved to post-apocalyptic future :)

Hope you'll visit the site and record/upload your own message as well! And please leave comments about what you think!
 
Cool idea.

To answer the question-

How to fight a 20 year nuclear war?

Quick answer- slowly.

The common assumption of nuclear war is that it will all happen either quickly and completely, or perhaps that it will be a limited exchange.

For instance, a nuclear war between two countries with limited nukes- Pakistan and India, could be a very slow and very limtied war. The consequences of detonating essentially messy bombs in populated cities would like lead to significant economic and administrative costs, potentially even break down.

Would that lead war to end? Perhaps not. Consider that World War 1 was fought with the expectation of quick and easy victory but failure led to prolonged engagement.

What would happen, for instance, if there was no one left to make peace? What if those in power have a vested interest in keeping war going for their own personal gain? Under both circumstances, war might continue despite the high costs.

But that's for a limited nuclear exchange.
What about a more global exchange among super powers.

Ok, here things get a bit tricky.
In theory, the war should be quick. As nuclear weapons cause massive damage and can be utilized to destroy the other side's strategic arsenal, there is an incentive to launch first and destroy the other side's missiles while they are still on the ground. So a first strike might be used to take out the enemy's launch capacity and not hit large population centers. You are launching to disarm the enemy, not to punish them (which runs against the logic of MAD). SO you fire against the enemy's ICBMs, submarines (if you can find them) and airbases capable of launching bombers (assuming the basic triad exists). Each side may also wish to take out command and control. Lost command and control may lead to the same problem with a limited strike- no one in charge or no one with the authority to end the war or negotiate peace.

But the basic logic of the war suggests a quick strike is essential- get the enemy's strategic assets quickly.

The logic of deterrence however is that the high level of damages given the chance of retaliation outweighs the possible benefits of the exchange. In short, the costs of war outweigh the gains. If war is quick and decisive, as soon as the momentum gets going, than war is unleashed. Add to that calculation that there is a risk that wars can become uncontrollable by those in power- essentially, one has unleashed the dogs of war and now can't put the leash back on.

But what if the leash is on? What if the war occurs not with a sudden flash and rush to launch weapons before they are neutralized?

What if the war is done in such a way that it is measured, that exchanges are carefully limited to cause damage or injury, but there are sufficient constraints on those in conflict that they don't go all the way? They engage in a nuclear exchange with restraint- sufficient restraint to prevent them from going 'all out' but not enough pain to either compel peace or deter violence?

This idea shaped the logic of the "ladder of escalation." This pre-MAD theory assumed that the nature of nuclear exchange could be controlled and limited. That one could escalate war but could also, potentially, de-escalate the war.

Is this likely- no. Why- in part because the technology that exists, the nature of nuclear exchange itself and the unlikelihood that either side would risk restraint. In a sense, you are asking both sides to fight and agree.

If you were to model this- it would be like moving from a single prisoner's dilemma to an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Likely? No.

Possible? Yes.

Actually classic Star Trek has an episode where the sides have essentially reached an agreement about war- so that massive amounts of casualties are calculated but no damage is done- and war becomes perpetual.

In our case- war becomes perpetual because those in leadership have gotten to a point where they accept the costs as within their best interest whereas ending war or making peace is either impossible or not within those interests.

Pretty dark.
 
In our case- war becomes perpetual because those in leadership have gotten to a point where they accept the costs as within their best interest whereas ending war or making peace is either impossible or not within those interests.
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Kind of like the Cold War, but less cold?

Cheers welsh, can see how it could happen in theory, and as the OP said it will be a fusion war then the scenario of a controlled exchange becomes more likely I would say. (Fusion weapons = less Fallout per mega ton than fission right?)
 
Yoshi525 said:
(Fusion weapons = less Fallout per mega ton than fission right?)
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I guess future's fusion weapon would be somekind of non-fission-related hydrogen bomb so less fallout, lot of steam though
 
frequency2156 said:
Yoshi525 said:
(Fusion weapons = less Fallout per mega ton than fission right?)
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I guess future's fusion weapon would be somekind of non-fission-related hydrogen bomb so less fallout, lot of steam though
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You can't really start a fusion reaction without a fission bomb.
You need incredible amounts of heat and pressure to fuse hydrogen, which can currently be only achieved through a fission bomb.
And I doubt that that will change.
And steam? There's no steam, a perfect fusion weapon leaves behind nothing but helium :D
Also, I doubt that in the future there'd be a war with fusion weaponry. H-bombs make for excellent high-yield strategic bombs, but warfare doctrine shifted from mass destruction to precision bombing.
Although they have less fallout, they aren't really good for a perpetual war. There is still loads of fallout, especially if detonated close to the ground, and pricey strategic weaponry is not exactly what would be useful in a perpetual war.

If only very limited amounts are used, then it could be realistic, I guess.
 
You can't really start a fusion reaction without a fission bomb.
You need incredible amounts of heat and pressure to fuse hydrogen, which can currently be only achieved through a fission bomb.
And I doubt that that will change.
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Unless fusion power generation becomes a great deal more efficient, leading onto small-scale, yet high energy power sources, e.g. fusion cells in Fallout. If fusion ammunition cells can be used to power personal plasma weaponry, then it isn't too much of a stretch to suggest a fusion bomb being triggered by some kind of fusion detonator.

Also cold fusion :|
 
Cold fusion is very unrealistic.
In the end, you always have to overcome the coulomb-barrier so two nucleons fuse to a new nucleus. The usual reaction is deuterium (one proton, one neutron) and one tritium (one proton and two neutrons) fuse to helium (two neutrons and two protons) and one free neutron.
That is the most common reaction in our sun and in H-bombs.
There are several ways to do that.
The easiest way is to accelerate protons with an electric field and smash them into eacht other. That's called "Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor" and actually works, but it's not possible to get any net energy out of it.
Most experimental fusors work with magnetic confinement.
A magnetic field confines the deuterium and tritium (or hydrogen or whatever. Up until iron everything is fusable with a positive amount of net energy. D+T is the most common and easiest, though) as it is heated to several million degrees celsius. Then the thermal energy of the nucleons is high engough to overcome the coulomb barrier and fusion sets in.
Our sun and hydrogen bombs work differently, though, and that is actually the only way we actually know that works :D
They work with inertial confinement.
A pellet of fusion-material (deuterium or tritium, SciFi proposes Helium-3) is heated from the outside with lasers or heavy ion beams. The outer shell expands rapidly and compresses and heats the inner parts of the pellet. At some point, fusion will start. Hydrogen bombs work the same way. They "boost" a fission weapon by placing deuterium or tritium around a fission bomb.
The explosion creates heat and pressure high enough that the fusion stage starts to fuse.
In the sun, the gravitational pressure jumpstarted the fusion process, but it's the same principle. Heat and pressure.

So long, boring, scientific story short: Cold fusion is not something that is covered in currently known physics.

The immense energy requirement to start the fusion process makes a miniaturization pretty much impossible.
Let's say the microfusion cells in Fallout work with magnetic confinement.
The magnetic fields in the cell necessary to contain the plasma has to be very, very strong. It's impossible to miniaturize such magnets.

Also, personal plasma weaponry is bullshit. A plasma beam is made of charged particles, which repell each other. So without on outer magnetic field, the beam will expand and nothing will happen. There are theories about creating a plasma ring that stabilizes itself with its own magnetic field, though.

Well, in the end, realism in SciFi sucks, I guess.
The future is not nearly as cool as we imagine it to be.
 
Well, in the end, realism in SciFi sucks, I guess.
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You got there! Cold fusion is obviously highly improbable going on the current scientific paradigm. Just as personal plasma weapons are. At the end of the day though, it's worth realizing that everything we believe to be true now, everything we take for granted as an objective fact, is in fact a product of our current paradigm of thought. Now you can say our current paradigm is a lot more derived from methodical experimentation and analysis than previous ones, that is true but the nature of our perceptions and minds in general lead me to doubt that we will ever be able to finish the jigsaw, so to speak. Assuming there is even a limit to the pieces, or even a damn jigsaw at all.

Which leads us to the topic of sci-fi. We can say x wouldn't be the case because of theory y, or you could say x is unlikely to be the case, but never the less it would appeal to our fantasies more if it were the case.

But yeah, cold fusion would be pushing things a bit far, I agree.
 
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