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Guest
Guest
Some people in fact many believe that Nuclear war is a 'fightable and winnable' situation.
This viewpoint could not be more wrong. Such beliefs, if anything, make such a war far more likely.
The following studie was performed by the US Office of Technology Assessment during the cold war but in Fallout the only difference is the 'enemy':
All out nuclear war against military, economic and population targets.
The theory that NUTS (nuclear utilization targeting strategy, i.e. smaller payload, highly accurate weapons used for the destruction of hostile forces) will be the only tactic used does not contain any accurate reflection of human nature. Inevitably civilians will be killed by any use of nuclear weapons which would only be met by revenge attacks degenerating into utilization of MAD (mutually assured destruction) tactics. Attacks on civilians, therefore are highly probable. If this is not a good enough argument for the targeting of civilians, imagine, as in Fallout, where a large scale conventional war has been raging for many years which neither side can afford to loose. One side launches first and succeeds in destroying the large majority of the other's forces (realistic so far?).
Dose the other side: a) submit to the brutalities of the victorious nation?
b) feel destruction of both is better than destruction of itself?
An attack on Washington DC
Result: Imagine a circle with radius of one and a half miles with the white house at its center.
A US government study estimates that within the circle ninety eight percent of the people would die. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials would be leveled, the capitol would be shattered.
People would suffer third degree burns as far away as Alexandria, Virginia and Takoma Park, Maryland. With normal prevailing winds, radioactive fallout would spread a cigar shaped swath of sickness and death eastwards across Maryland and out to Cape May, New Jersey.
In the Washington metropolitan area beyond the blast radius sixty thousand people would die and eight hundred thousand be injured. Of the six thousand doctors in the area fifteen hundred would be killed and two thousand seriously injured, leaving only two thousand to care for all the wounded (assuming anyone would stay in the city or bother to care). All the major hospitals would be destroyed.
That was ONE warhead, in a real war many times that number would actually fall on the city.
With the cities destroyed vast areas of the country side are covered in fallout, but much of it would remain untouched? No. In the USA one thousand and fifty two nuclear tipped missiles are located in farming areas outside places like Little Rock, Arkansas and Great Falls. An enemy would certainly target these sites, probably with two warheads on each silo.
Now that we have established that civilians most likely will be targeted in a nuclear war we can examine the casualty rate again based on official figures. In the urban north seven hundred and fifty million people would be killed outright, mainly by blast. Some three hundred and forty million would be seriously injured. Due to the previously discussed absence of medical treatment nearly all of these would also die. Of the two hundred million survivors, many would perish from the latent affects of radiation and infectious diseases. In the long term, many millions would die from cancer, many millions would become sterile and many millions of children would be borne with birth defects.
The aftermath of a nuclear war would be indescribable (I certainly can't). People used to living in our supremely decadent society would be shot back into the stone age. They would have no idea how to gather food, build homes and find water.
The traumatic affect of the war would drive many insane. The knowledge that your family and friends are probably dead, the sick, the wounded and the dying encountered almost every second on a walk through a recently hit city, the hopeless feeling that no help will come. The feeling of mankind's total loss. I doubt if we ouselves can imagine it.
Reconstruction would take a second place to survival for those remaining. People would most certainly for band and tribes but the sparse spreading of these pockets of people would keep them isolated from one another. The complete lack of communications would make it impossible to co-ordinate any reconstruction effort and any spirit of union with the rest of the country would quickly disappear and with the lack of education would probably die out within a few generation.
After initial survival, both physically and mentally, the long term problems of survival set in. Many people these days are unfit and infirm and would soon be weeded out by nature. The 'Hunter gatherer' instinct would eventually prevail as the average daylight the entire northern hemisphere would receive would be below five per cent, nothing would grow and an arctic climate would creep over the northern hemisphere.
Remember the US government bunker discovered under a hotel, I forget where? That was a massive self maintaining complex designed to preserve those inside it for a very long period of time. So it looks like the US government wasn't planning on running out before the fallout had settled handing out medi kits and waving a plan of reconstruction because they know that planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war is like planning for the aftermath of having your brain removed
Fallout is optimistic in that it believes that people could survive outside the Vaults.
'The Next war will be fought with nuclear weapons, the one after that will be fought with spears'
This viewpoint could not be more wrong. Such beliefs, if anything, make such a war far more likely.
The following studie was performed by the US Office of Technology Assessment during the cold war but in Fallout the only difference is the 'enemy':
All out nuclear war against military, economic and population targets.
The theory that NUTS (nuclear utilization targeting strategy, i.e. smaller payload, highly accurate weapons used for the destruction of hostile forces) will be the only tactic used does not contain any accurate reflection of human nature. Inevitably civilians will be killed by any use of nuclear weapons which would only be met by revenge attacks degenerating into utilization of MAD (mutually assured destruction) tactics. Attacks on civilians, therefore are highly probable. If this is not a good enough argument for the targeting of civilians, imagine, as in Fallout, where a large scale conventional war has been raging for many years which neither side can afford to loose. One side launches first and succeeds in destroying the large majority of the other's forces (realistic so far?).
Dose the other side: a) submit to the brutalities of the victorious nation?
b) feel destruction of both is better than destruction of itself?
An attack on Washington DC
Result: Imagine a circle with radius of one and a half miles with the white house at its center.
A US government study estimates that within the circle ninety eight percent of the people would die. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials would be leveled, the capitol would be shattered.
People would suffer third degree burns as far away as Alexandria, Virginia and Takoma Park, Maryland. With normal prevailing winds, radioactive fallout would spread a cigar shaped swath of sickness and death eastwards across Maryland and out to Cape May, New Jersey.
In the Washington metropolitan area beyond the blast radius sixty thousand people would die and eight hundred thousand be injured. Of the six thousand doctors in the area fifteen hundred would be killed and two thousand seriously injured, leaving only two thousand to care for all the wounded (assuming anyone would stay in the city or bother to care). All the major hospitals would be destroyed.
That was ONE warhead, in a real war many times that number would actually fall on the city.
With the cities destroyed vast areas of the country side are covered in fallout, but much of it would remain untouched? No. In the USA one thousand and fifty two nuclear tipped missiles are located in farming areas outside places like Little Rock, Arkansas and Great Falls. An enemy would certainly target these sites, probably with two warheads on each silo.
Now that we have established that civilians most likely will be targeted in a nuclear war we can examine the casualty rate again based on official figures. In the urban north seven hundred and fifty million people would be killed outright, mainly by blast. Some three hundred and forty million would be seriously injured. Due to the previously discussed absence of medical treatment nearly all of these would also die. Of the two hundred million survivors, many would perish from the latent affects of radiation and infectious diseases. In the long term, many millions would die from cancer, many millions would become sterile and many millions of children would be borne with birth defects.
The aftermath of a nuclear war would be indescribable (I certainly can't). People used to living in our supremely decadent society would be shot back into the stone age. They would have no idea how to gather food, build homes and find water.
The traumatic affect of the war would drive many insane. The knowledge that your family and friends are probably dead, the sick, the wounded and the dying encountered almost every second on a walk through a recently hit city, the hopeless feeling that no help will come. The feeling of mankind's total loss. I doubt if we ouselves can imagine it.
Reconstruction would take a second place to survival for those remaining. People would most certainly for band and tribes but the sparse spreading of these pockets of people would keep them isolated from one another. The complete lack of communications would make it impossible to co-ordinate any reconstruction effort and any spirit of union with the rest of the country would quickly disappear and with the lack of education would probably die out within a few generation.
After initial survival, both physically and mentally, the long term problems of survival set in. Many people these days are unfit and infirm and would soon be weeded out by nature. The 'Hunter gatherer' instinct would eventually prevail as the average daylight the entire northern hemisphere would receive would be below five per cent, nothing would grow and an arctic climate would creep over the northern hemisphere.
Remember the US government bunker discovered under a hotel, I forget where? That was a massive self maintaining complex designed to preserve those inside it for a very long period of time. So it looks like the US government wasn't planning on running out before the fallout had settled handing out medi kits and waving a plan of reconstruction because they know that planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war is like planning for the aftermath of having your brain removed
Fallout is optimistic in that it believes that people could survive outside the Vaults.
'The Next war will be fought with nuclear weapons, the one after that will be fought with spears'
).