Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War

[Anthony]

The basic problem of trying to figure out rational targeting during a nuclear war is that modern era warfare is a pretty significant loser for both sides, so when it happens it's generally someone making a mistake or being irrational.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

When African and South American nations export resources to your enemy, they are involved in a total war scenario, whether they declare neutrality or not. This is especially true with state-sponsored capitalism such as that practiced by China, where investments in African and South American nations would allow for the rapid recovery of China if it was devestated by war. The rational choice for a nation at that point is the target the major trade partners of their enemy, in order to deprive them of the resources required for recovery, which is why every nuclear war scenario of the USSR seemed to involve nuking the 'neutral' trade partners of the USA.

A similar calculation would likely come into effect in a nuclear conflict between Russia and China, as Russia cannot win in a conventional war against China. I am afraid that the USA would come to a similar conclusion if China decided to invade the US allies in East Asia or Southeast Asia, though the USA would likely not waste nukes on 'neutral' nations unless the Chinese somehow crippled the US Navy. The USA would prefer to use diplomacy, as nuking the ports of Africa, Oceania, and South America would have long term negative effects, but it would nuke them if it felt that it had no other choice.

For modern nuclear attack plans, maybe.



The OP specifically asked about the 1962 and 1983 incidents. These are periods for which we have US nuclear plans that have been moderately declassified. The US SIOP for nuclear deployment reportedly dropped china from a response against Russia for about 20 years (including possibly the 1983 window). Individuals in the aftermath might select additional targets, but I doubt that the conclusion is "we need to wipe out the Indonesians because they are trade partners".


Though I could see some dueling submarine captains with nukes both threatening Jakarta unless it renders extreme aid. It depends on the mentality of the remaining commanders, I suppose. And how pliant the world leaders they are threatening are.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by TGLS

None at all. The unbombed areas of the world would be just fine.

I would hardly call nuclear winter "just fine". Must likely the result would make the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages look like the tropics for a while.

The aftermath of when that asteroid slammed into the Yucatan some 65 million years ago shows that enough dust in the atmosphere to totally FUBAR the food chains.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

I would hardly call nuclear winter "just fine". Must likely the result would make the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages look like the tropics for a while.

The aftermath of when that asteroid slammed into the Yucatan some 65 million years ago shows that enough dust in the atmosphere to totally FUBAR the food chains.

There is no way that even an all out nuclear exchange in the 80s could put that many particulates in the air to match the Yucatan asteroid. And if you had your nuclear exchange in the 60s I serious doubt that there would be a significant climate impact.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

When African and South American nations export resources to your enemy, they are involved in a total war scenario, whether they declare neutrality or not. This is especially true with state-sponsored capitalism such as that practiced by China, where investments in African and South American nations would allow for the rapid recovery of China if it was devestated by war. The rational choice for a nation at that point is the target the major trade partners of their enemy,

No, not really. The "rational" choice is to try to paste every population center and military installation so there's nothing to recover. Ideally, before they can even launch with more than a fraction of their nuclear assets. The surviving nations aren't going to try to trade with a nuked nation if there's no there there.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by maximara

I would hardly call nuclear winter "just fine". Must likely the result would make the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages look like the tropics for a while.

The aftermath of when that asteroid slammed into the Yucatan some 65 million years ago shows that enough dust in the atmosphere to totally FUBAR the food chains.

The problems with the Nuclear Winter concept are:
1) Most nuclear detonations against countervalue targets are airbursts that knock buildings flat and start fires. The amount of dust knocked up by these detonations is negligible.
2) It's debatable that cities would burn sufficiently to put a sufficient amount of soot into the atmosphere.
3) It's debatable that the soot would remain in the atmosphere long enough to have sufficient impact.

[Black Leviathan]

A nuclear war itself does very little to technology. It makes a lot of electronics malfunction and destroys electricity for large parts of the world so there's slight risks in backsliding in those directions. But the technology itself is still present once power is restored and circuit boards can be rebuilt. What's more most of the bleeding edge technology of a period would be utilized in bunkers and safeguarded by the military as survival is a high tech endeavor.

The real risk would be consolidation after a nuclear war. Once the generation that did understand this technology passes what will the children understand? given the heavy and ambiguous casualties there's fair risk that many parts of the world would lose the foundations of those technologies. There could be enough gasoline for years after the war but nobody would understand how to build or repair a refinery. You could have all of the electrical engineers from every tech company safe in bunkers but not have any surviving people who know how to build a transistor that works. It could be very exotic knowledge that gets lost. You might have zoologists who know exactly how to rehabilitate the Panda population make it through the war but nobody who knows enough about equine physiology survives the war to prevent a disease that kills off all of the horses. A lot of that knowledge will bounce back in a generation or two but maybe we bounce back with Pandas plowing our fields.

[Willy]

Another thing you have always to consider, is that many nation, including USA, Russia and China, have or had military bases around the globe which, not to mention a lot of allies. All this would be targets of at least secondary priority, and therefore it´s higly possible that they are nuked to. For this and other reasons the southern heminsphere would also be harmed by radioactive pollution. In our world even in the 80`s was never a safe spot from this military doctrines. Look at the Falkland island ,the russian bases in syria ( they are there for decades ), the western or eastern allies in afrika and asia, sorry there is no escape. At the high times of the MAD strategie there have been enough warheads for every important target, including big cities, industry complexes and of course all major military targets and then some more, this included a backup strategie to have enough missiles to hit targets where the missile defense worked or which became areas in which recovery started in a second wave. A nuclear sub can basically stay hidden as long as the food storage allows, this means far longer then a month. By the way there are rumors about a russian system once called dead hand, meaning even if NATO kills the emeny before they could launch, there missiles would start after a certain time. Because then nobody was there that could enter a stand by code.

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

A nuclear war itself does very little to technology. It makes a lot of electronics malfunction and destroys electricity for large parts of the world so there's slight risks in backsliding in those directions. But the technology itself is still present once power is restored and circuit boards can be rebuilt. What's more most of the bleeding edge technology of a period would be utilized in bunkers and safeguarded by the military as survival is a high tech endeavor.

Sorry, but this is not correct. First EMP is higly likely to fry the hard drives, or other electronic storage devices. Yes, a CD doesn´t count to this but the drive needed to read them is also sensible to EMP. There are attemps to safeguard the worlds knowledge, but as you wrote after a generation there may be nobady who can use that meaningful. A good old book is much more possible to survive in a state in which is useful. As for military data storages, I think there is a vast difference which the military sees as useful enough to storage and what the rest of the population thinks about this. By the way such installations are at least secondary targets fur nukes. Because they can help rebuilding, and are often also installed in military bases. It had a reason why at the high times of the east west conflict, it was a often read suggestion to people who build there own bunkers, to store some books safely they thought to be useful. Even if this people wouldn´t survive, there books would.
I think a campaign themed around recovey of such lost knowledge is more meaningful then hunting radiated ghouls.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by TGLS

The problems with the Nuclear Winter concept are:
1) Most nuclear detonations against countervalue targets are airbursts that knock buildings flat and start fires. The amount of dust knocked up by these detonations is negligible.
2) It's debatable that cities would burn sufficiently to put a sufficient amount of soot into the atmosphere.
3) It's debatable that the soot would remain in the atmosphere long enough to have sufficient impact.

I always though that one of the idea in MAD was to take out your enemy's land misses before they got out of their silos and to do that you want a ground explosion.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by maximara

I always though that one of the idea in MAD was to take out your enemy's land misses before they got out of their silos and to do that you want a ground explosion.

No, that's the reverse of MAD. The idea in MAD is to make sure your enemies can't do that.