How a nuclear war would play out in our world?

Sn1p3r187

Carolinian Shaolin Monk
If it went global I'd say it be something more along the lines of Metro 2033 or The Book of Eli in terms of environment, life after, and where shelter is to be taken. The closest thing we have to Vault-Tec in our world is Vivos Underground Survival Shelters which are actually privately funded and owned and have no part of the government unless they started taking up contracting for the U.S government or any government in the world. Here's a link to their site- http://terravivos.com/

If not Vivos shelters then many people in the U.S in the biggest cities like N.Y.C, Los Angeles, Chicago, and D.C would likely be taking up residence in vast Metro tunnels since Metro tunnels themselves are built bomb shelters to protect residents of the cities from the worst of what's to come. Now regarding games like Fallout 3. Yes D.C would inevitabley be hit but not on the scale of what we see in Fallout 3. In fact it'd be far worse. The general calculation of the Chinese nuclear warhead yield is in the 3-5 Megaton range on their ICBMs so one launch of their DF-5 would've tore D.C apart along with the surrounding countryside. And very likely to collapse the bunker underneath the White House just while in air burst.

D.C would not be standing much at all. The Washington monument would be knocked over, the Capitol building a skeletal remain if anything at all, downtown D.C would be a giant blast mark, and I think it'd actually be a lot easier to get around on the surface since not many buildings would be standing. Knowing the Chinese nuclear arsenal today with most of the sources allocated towards MIRVs to launch more warheads with less power to cover more tactical or strategic targets, most of these missiles would be heading towards the Midwest and the East Coast. Oh believe me, the East Coast would get it the worst. Saturated with bombs. Likely the President and his cabinet would've been relocated to the Raven Rock bunker and likely to continue addressing the nation after the war, but all prove futile as everything would collapse when people are making self sufficient communities and starting their own governments in hopes not to repeat the mistakes of the previous one. Since the Chinese are as smart as us. The President of China and the rest of the Chinese Communist party would relocate to bunkers as well.

But the Chinese government would likely collapse as well in this event as many people would past communism in hopes to not relieve the days of Mao Zedong or the 21st century equivalent of Communism with a capitalist agenda that still found a way to make many lives bad. Here's a map showing cold war Russian targets and likely Chinese targets in the case of a global nuclear exchange- http://www.conspiracyclub.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/USA-targets-nuclear-attacksrr.jpg

So any thoughts on how you see a nuclear exchange playing out in real life here?
 
China?

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I think Threads pretty much gave us a good idea how the world after a nuclear war will be like for the survivors.
They definitely won't be doing any post apocalyptic adventuring.

Most likely even surviving governments will be falling apart in countries hit by nuclear weapons, at any rate they would not not be the legitimate government any more as most of their electorate will be dead and the survivors have a lot of other things on their mind than listening to some suits who are hiding in a bunker.
 
I think Threads pretty much gave us a good idea how the world after a nuclear war will be like for the survivors.
They definitely won't be doing any post apocalyptic adventuring.

Most likely even surviving governments will be falling apart in countries hit by nuclear weapons, at any rate they would not not be the legitimate government any more as most of their electorate will be dead and the survivors have a lot of other things on their mind than listening to some suits who are hiding in a bunker.
Why wouldn't they? Not even 50 years down the road?
 
Well I exaggerated a little I agree regarding the legitimate government part.
But unless these do an active effort to coordinate any recovery/rebuilding effort and provide supplies and protection the survivors may eventually decide that the leadership no longer represents them anymore. (it is already a bit hard to follow the leadership of someone who lives in the safety and comfort of a bunker while you yourself will have to live in whatever shelter you patched together, and have to live a life with various difficulties and hardships such as perhaps limited supplies of food and water, probably no access anymore to medical care and medicines, no things we took for granted like modern comforts.

At some point the government will probably turn feudal, I am not sure if democracy would survive directly after a nuclear war, especially not the model or version we have know which is a combination of democracy/corporatism.
 
Well I exaggerated a little I agree regarding the legitimate government part.
But unless these do an active effort to coordinate any recovery/rebuilding effort and provide supplies and protection the survivors may eventually decide that the leadership no longer represents them anymore. (it is already a bit hard to follow the leadership of someone who lives in the safety and comfort of a bunker while you yourself will have to live in whatever shelter you patched together, and have to live a life with various difficulties and hardships such as perhaps limited supplies of food and water, probably no access anymore to medical care and medicines, no things we took for granted like modern comforts.

At some point the government will probably turn feudal, I am not sure if democracy would survive directly after a nuclear war, especially not the model or version we have know which is a combination of democracy/corporatism.
Do you think that's very likely?
 
The physical damage of the bombs would be fairly minor compared to the consequences of political-economical collapse. Even if you launched every nuclear weapon, you couldn't destroy most of the planet, but destroying all the major cities of the world's most prominent countries would be sufficient to throw everything into chaos. Anything that happens in the world is connected to something else in a wide web of power relations, resources, people, and other stuff. While society would eventually re-organize itself, that damage would be enough to set us back by centuries.
 
Do you think that's very likely?

Collapse of a surviving government after a nuclear war?
Pretty much, once the resources run out, especially the ones the government needs for its own members and to motivate people to listen and work for them I think the structure will start to fall apart.

I believe current leaderships in the world are to much separated from the common people to the point that they barely feel connected to each other any more.
I have to live with the laws, regulations, and financial cutbacks government officials has put in place I did not even vote for during the election, so they definitely are not representing me.
 
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Anecdotal information: In the wikileaky chaos, there's a mention of Chinese nuclear arsenal being "meant" primarily for a (potential) war with Taiwan (see "one China" politics). Obviously, take that with some grains of salt, but it does - to some extent - explain the limited stockpile, given the time China has had to expand it at will.
 
For some reason, I think that you would fitt perfectly in to a post-nuclear-war scenario. Beeing one of the most succesfull beeings out there even. You're wasting (sadly) your potential in this world.

I kinda imagine you as a more friendly version of Lord Humungus.

 
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For some reason, I think that you would fitt perfectly in to a post-nuclear-war scenario. Beeing one of the most succesfull beeings out there even. You're wasting (sadly) your potential in this world.

I kinda imagine you as a more friendly version of Lord Humungus.



Does any of us have muscles like that? I know someone with muscles like that, I should seek him out if the nuclear holocaust begins
I'm sure there's maybe a few on this forum, then some with handguns and stuff, but I've said before, it takes more than that to become some wastelander-of-legend, look at Max himself!
He is a trained police officer! - And keeps on getting his ass kicked, busted, apprehended, enslaved, tortured

The nuclear wasteland would eat us alive, and only a small percentage - if even, would survive the first year.

The horses would be eaten first...
 
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For some reason, I think that you would fitt perfectly in to a post-nuclear-war scenario. Beeing one of the most succesfull beeings out there even. You're wasting (sadly) your potential in this world.

I kinda imagine you as a more friendly version of Lord Humungus.

I think I'd survive. I'd make my livings as a mercenary working between the Appalachians on a supply route between North Carolina and Georgia. In hopes of helping survivors and making a living doing security or fighting off bandits.
 
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I would become a schoolar, devastated and malformed from the radiation and toxic pollution living underground hoarding knowledge. And sometimes luring trespassers in with my telepathic ability, just to know what happens outside. And to get something to eat.

Wait? I am the Master ... :look:
 
It's the honor of the saddest legacy to the world, the shortest of recorded legends:
Ed's dead, baby, Ed's dead.
 
Unfortunately, I don't think human civilization would ever recover. If we're talking height of the Cold War numbers of warheads, then we're looking at an extinction event that would probably top the dino-killer. If we're talking about today, then most first world places would be still be annihilated, and while humans would likely survive, the utter demolition of society would cripple the world massively. Not a nice life at all.

Then again, I'm not an expert on these kinds of things.
 
Unfortunately, I don't think human civilization would ever recover. If we're talking height of the Cold War numbers of warheads, then we're looking at an extinction event that would probably top the dino-killer. If we're talking about today, then most first world places would be still be annihilated, and while humans would likely survive, the utter demolition of society would cripple the world massively. Not a nice life at all.

Then again, I'm not an expert on these kinds of things.

The world would survive, there's plenty of research on this (much of it precisely in order to determine how a gvt would need to react, and such. There's several "theoretical simulations" of a nuclear strike on American targets, for example)

Consensus seems to be that major cities will be wiped out, along with large chunks of their population. Killing everybody is almost never possible, people- organisms - are notoriously hard to clear away.
So, the initial bombardment would - in worst case scenario - clear out a big chunk (although not all) of the world's urban populations.
Countrysides are vast, and make cities appear only like insignificant dots on the landscape. Countrysides are litterally unbombable. I mean, sure, you can bomb forests and fields, but wtf... ? Look at conventional bombing of hills and mountains, how many Talibans are left to kill? 10 000? Good luck bombing them hills! :D
People there will deal with the usual fallouty stuff - floods of refugees, rampant sickness (both from the radiation, but also from the collapse of infrastructure, meaning a lot would be infectious), hunger, and the chaos of lawlessness.

People will then not sit around and stare at the wall, they'll get right to work, people need to defend their own, feed their own, look after etc, so that's most likely what will be happening.

A blanketing "nuclear winter" is a matter of debate, so, none of us are experts, so I'm not gonna speculate about it.
So, that aside, there's no real reason that the world's green areas will suffer, if anything, they'll rejoyce, now that humanity has been devastated, production (and therefore harvest, logging, etc) grinds to a halt.
This could be good news for nature :D

A very loose estimate for human loss of life during an all out nuclear holocaust, I've seen one place half a billion initially, during the bombardment (worlds urban populations), for then a larger chunk to die off because of the diseases and other long-term effects.
In the end, world population would probably not even be halved.

It would probably disrupt a lot of the global political structure. If there was a UN, this would be difficult to maintain, w all the worlds capitals laying in ruin. Same goes for big, complex federations, like Russia, China, USA, India, Brazil, I have a difficult time seeing these giants keeping together, politically, after their capitals and metropolises have been utterly destroyed.
Organizations like "NCR" are therefore not too unlikely, as local populations would try to secure their own homes - by creating buffer zones, and then borders, and finally governments and armies of their own.
That's tons of speculation tho :D

Bottom line is - everything is relative
WW2 was the worst war in the history of all humanity, yet it did not even dent population growth on earth - it even spurred technological research.
Nuclear war will be yet worse, but still far from the end of humanity, even further from the end of the world.
 
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