01-07-2021, 12:14 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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01-07-2021, 12:19 AM | #22 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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Remember, the major powers had thousands of missiles, each with multiple warheads, at their disposal. Using a few for an EMP attack 'just to be sure', or to 'nuke 'em into the stone age' costs very little, especially if you can expect that the enemy will find and kill the missile(s) at some point anyway. And, once you're done with you direct enemy, there are his allies, likely allies, possible allies, the neutral countries that might aid them more than you, and so on down the list. And there were nukes enough for all.
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01-07-2021, 01:01 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
In 1983, I think that there is a lot of difference between nations with large arsenals (the US and USSR) and nations with small arsenals (China, France, Israel, and the UK). In the former case, they are torching their target because they have the nukes available, and their enemy might not recover for a few generations. In the latter case, they are likely crippling the military capabilities of their enemy, so the targeted nation would probably come back in five to ten years.
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01-07-2021, 01:11 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
Something else to consider, and something that changed a lot since the time most studies where done (ie during the cold war) :
There are perhaps a couple hundred semiconductor fabrication plants and foundries worldwide. Often clustered close to each others, and in major cities likely to be nuked in a mass conflict. It is unlikely that any big one would survive. Those are NOT something you can rebuild from scratch in a hurry. And the actual microchip designs would be extremely unlikely to have survived. There are of course billions of existing IC to salvage, but you will not be producing any new "late TL-8" ones for a looooong time. Last edited by Celjabba; 01-07-2021 at 09:16 AM. |
01-07-2021, 01:20 AM | #25 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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When you see calculations that claim to show stuff like 'enough to kill everyone' or 'wipe out civilization', keep in mind that they're usually very naïve calculations. In practice, the fallout doesn't go everywhere. The winds concentrate it in some places, protect others. You might be moderately upwind of ground zero and be fine, or many miles downwind and be in big trouble. It also depends on who is nuking who and why. If the blasts are largely confined to the northern hemisphere, much of the southern hemisphere will be essentially unaffected (except by subsequent disruptions of trade and economics and politics). If it's the USA vs. the USSR, China might conceivably emerge more or less intact, depending on the details. Don't get me wrong, such a war would be an inconceivable disaster, but the world would survive, and on a historical scale it probably wouldn't be as bad as the Black Death was. Quote:
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It also makes a big difference where the bomb goes off. Some places will generate a lot more or a lot less fallout than others. And of course the radiation levels fall off quickly. Areas that are deadly a week after the bomb goes off may merely be dangerous a month later. A few years later, most of the problem (other than cancer rates and the like) is past.
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01-07-2021, 05:01 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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That's rather more than 5-10 years worth of rebuilding and repopulating.
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01-07-2021, 05:09 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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Even assuming a saner war (if any mass nuclear exchange can be considered 'sane') if it's at the wrong time of the year it'd be rather bad for China (and many other countries). It doesn't take a full-on 80-hype nuclear winter to ruin the grain crops in the northern hemisphere if there's a week-long cold snap at the wrong time in spring. That means mass starvation, and given the added stress of injury, loss, homelessness, etc. in any country that was directly attacked it gets even worse. The 'good' news is that the ruin international travel infrastructure means epidemics will tend to remain 'local'. That said, humans would survive, and some places would recover fairly quickly. Just who ends up as the new world powers is up in the air, though. If writing a setting after a nuclear war, you're pretty much free to choose who's on top, and who never really recovered and then mould the war to fit that outcome (though I'd just leave it vague - less likely to make a major error that the players pick up on that way).
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01-07-2021, 07:26 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
Other high impact target would have been dams. Detonated a nuclear weapon in the reservoir a few miles from a dam would create a tsunami that would have destroyed any community on the shores of the reservior and pushed over the dam, devestating any community downstream and pushing over any downstream dams with the resulting flooding. It would have also deprived local communities of electricity and clean water, the latter being an immediate survival problem, and deprived irrigation networks of water, which would have been a more long term survival issue.
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01-07-2021, 08:53 AM | #29 | |||||||||
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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01-07-2021, 11:59 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War
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