Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Do you think a nuclear war would be survivable? I don't, because the ammount of nations that have nuclear weapons is large, and spread out. We'd all be killed, and even if we survived the initial blast and initial radiation, the world's oceans would be inevitably poisoned.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Define survivable please. Life as we know it, or life in general?

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Scorpions and cockroaches will still be here afterwards.:)

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

I'm so sorry I didn't reply, my power went out(guys working on the power cords). My first attempt at an intellegent thread and my power goes out x.x. Anyways by survival I meant that the human race was still around and had a breeding population.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

In that case, yes. I have no doubt that in the highly unlikely event of a nuclear war the human race will continue to exist and procreate. Though life as we have come to know it will probably cease to exist.

Thankfully, the chances of us ever having to live through such a terrible even are next to nothing.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

i think we could survive.

It all depends on where and how many nukes would be detonated

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

*cough* Iran *cough*

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

We used to say the same thing about Russia; no-one's going to exchange nukes unless they've nothing left to lose.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Even if Iran detonates a nuke, everyone will gang up on them, give me one reason why either the USA, Russia, israel, and the other nuke capable countries would suddenly declare war on eachother? They wouldnt, the worst that would happen is that Iran gets glassed.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

It all depends how Iran detonated a nuke. If it just launched and it was tracked back to Iran then yeah, they'd be screwed. But if they were a bit more subtle about it, made it look like a state funded terrorist attack or the like they could conceivably get the nuclear equipped nations at war with each other.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Like in the "Sum of all fears"? Possibly, but i have more faith in people then that. It makes no sense for one of the astablished nuke capable countries to launch a single-nuke sneak attack on a neighbour. well, besides NK, Iran perhaps. I figure the US and Russian goverment would reason the same way, and would keep their finger off the "destroy the world" button at least untill its clear who, what and why.

I'm not so much afraid of the big players, its the little guys that bug me the most.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Of course we would survive, some would survive out in the open and be exposed to massive amounts of radiation, and a few very lucky people could take cover in a bunker (Don't know what good it would do when the food ran out, you'd have to come out but maybe the worst of the radiation would be gone).

I know I am a bit off topic, but would a fallout shelter be useful (As in the radiation levels would go down enough so that it would be survivable)?

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Obviously, depending on where you are, you could be spending years in a bunker, but you'd live.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Their ICBMs lack the ability to reach the United States. Even if they do have an atomic bomb, it would be physically too large to deploy in an ICBM. So the threat of them nuking the United States is zero.

The chances that they would sell a bomb to terrorists is disgustingly high, hence the reason that us interventionists argue for stoping their development of nuclear fuel, as well as halting the enrichment process.

If they were to use nuclear weapons against any other state in the region, the chances are rather good that said action would galvanize the middle east community against Iran (the whole muslims attacking muslims bit), and that problem would be solved quite quickly.

Israel is working on some amazing missile-interception systems right now. Ones that, in live testing, downed the majority of SR/ICBMs thrown against it. In theory, a few batteries of them could protect all of Israel and much of the territory surrounding it.

Raptor, bunker's don't help much. At one point during the Cold War, a whole missile regiment (ten silos) of single four megaton SS-18 Satans were targeted directly at Chyenne Mountain, the command center for NORAD. The chance that even a bunker that well equipped would survive such a strike is almost nothing.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Places like Autralia could probably save themselves.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

What makes you think that that was the best bunker in the world? It's pretty good, but we could have bigger and better bunkers hidden elsewhere (If you can't be seen you've already got a huge advantage).

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Cheyenne is the home of NORAD, there are not so many more important targets so they are probably as well protected as you can be.

No matter how deep you dig, a direct hit will at least destroy your escape-routes.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

I was thought Delta was talking about fallout and radiation, a fallout shelter would not protect against a direct hit.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

What if that is what they want you to think? In the event of a nuclear attack (Which is the only thing that can topple Cheyenne), all NORAD has to do is tell all of the American nukes to fire back. At that point, NORAD doesn't really need to do anything (In other words, the world is fucked, and you don't need to more nukes coming when your nation is already mostly glassed). By showing off NORAD as the "Best" bunker in the world you attract attention towards it while better bunkers could be beld elsewhere. The Cheyenne Complex may actually have a backup command station for all we know.

Unless you harden them well. Even if they were crushed beyond use, I don't think you'd want to come out too soon. The bunkers could have excavation equipment in them, or someone else could come and dig them out. Then again, the earth would be radioactive for a few years so you wouldn't have much reason to come out. The people would be find for a while untill everything stopped working (Our artifical worlds like Biolabs or whatever fail after like 3 years when someone screws it up).

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Chyenne Mountain is the command center for North American airspace defense. During a nuclear attack, it would be the most imporant single location, other than that occupied by the president, in the country.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

During a nuclear attack I wouldn't even bother shooting for the president. At that point his importance is effectively zero. Presidents are generally not great generals or tacticians, they are good - sometimes mediocre, at politics and getting votes. Neither of which matter in a nuclear war.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

cause: Human weaknesses

Surviving.. well, that kinda depends on the scale of the problem.. I was watching this series on Discovery channel yesterday about the Chernobyl disaster, and it turned out they got it under control just intime.. If the radioactive magna in the exploded reactor remains were to burn through the floor, it wouldve triggered a chain reaction causing an nuclear explosion so great that it probably wouldve destroyed europe in such a way that it wouldve become unhabitable.. Thank God for russian reliability eh.. :eek:

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Most of the so called "nuclear winter" theory is fraud. Such a cataclysm would require the detonations of hundreds of thousands of bombs. No war would realistically require that many missiles (There aren't that many targets - all of the cities, armies, fleets, and missile silos would be vaporized long before we reached the level needed for the nuclear winter). A real war like that would probably involve only a minority of the earth's surface.


I will go a step further - nukes have BROUGHT peace - not threatened it. Just look at all of the examples.

-The Allies and the USSR never dared fight out of fear of nuclear war

-When both India and Pakistan developed nukes, the intensity of the war degenerated into mere border skirmishes - both sides are terrified of nuclear escalation

-Israel aquired nukes. The various terrorists, dictators, and other war criminals scaled down their attacks out of fear of reprisal (The Jews remember the holocaust - I doubt they would plan to die alone this time:uhm: ). Now the war is fought on the guerrilla scale - none of the Arab states are directly involved any more.

But now things are started to get more complicated - since now thanks to improved technology - pretty soon any fool could build his own nuke - another sign of the decline of the nation state's monopoly on warfare.

Expect some pretty scary moments in the future.;)

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Depends on the Nuclear War. If it's I launch nuke at you, and you launch nike at me, then we realise our stupidity, then no. But if it turns to full scale war, then maybe. I think winds will end up getting to everyone in the end though.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

The president, or the acting president, is the only person who has access the nuclear launch codes of the United States. Some guy in Montana can't just let fly with his ICBMs because someone said some SS-25s are coming.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Even he can't do it on his own. If I remember correctly, you need two people to order a launch.

(But if someone started throwing nukes at us, I doubt anybody would wait for permission to strike back. ;) )

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

If a (highly unlikely) full scale nuclear war was to occur I doubt it'd completely wipe out mankind, it could sure fuck up the economy though.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Of course hmanity would survive - in fact most of us would survive. The only people affected in a full scale Nuclear war would be those in major cities. If you are in the country you are fine. The area affected by a nuke is rater small (only about 10 miles around it) the world is rather big and as soon as all the launch sites have been attacked it would be all over.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

You didn't consider radioactive fallout and the collapse of society.

Even if "normal" nuclear weapons explode they create a lot of fallout which causes diseases for years to come. But there is also the possiblity to outfit nukes with thorium or strontium and thereby artificially increasing the fallout to the point where a country becomes uninhabitable.

I think the results can be summed up quite well by this quote:
"I don't know what WWIIII will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones".

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Unless someone upstairs was phycotic, only a relatively small number of nukes would be detonated - enough to take out the enemy's ability to strike back, as well as destroying their military capability. Like Peterk said, most of the population of the earth would be fine. Only the people in the countries involved would have a problem.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

There are two types of codes involved in the launching of a nuclear weapon from an American silo. There's an authentication code which accompanies a fire order (really it would be calls an Emergency Action Message) to the silo to verify that the order to fire is actually from the right person and then there are activation codes which the staff of the silo usually retrieve from a safe which are used to physically unlock the weapon.
Neither of these is exclusive to the president - indeed the president would not have the codes to physically unlock the weapons, simply the codes to verify his orders.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

The problem is that if you throw a nuke at military capabilities you will end up destroying a lot of cities. Look at Russia, you can't disable their ability to wage war without destroying their large industrial cities.

Many nuclear weapons seem to be designed to take out population-centers (Russian or Chinese ICBMs are not that accurate, or so I heard). Also, if the enemy has some nukes left (which will probably be the case as there are mobile weapons on trains, trucks, submarines and planes) they probably won't be used to destroy empty rocket-silos but rather command&control facilities as well as the capital of the attacking country.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Chinese missiles wouldn't be too accurate since they are relativly new to the ICBM weapons.

Russia on the other hand is getting along fine with its newer missile types. The small and generally accurate SS-25 SICKLE (Topol) and SS-27 (Topol-M) is considered to be among the best ICBMs in the Russian missile forces due to their high chance of retaliation since they can be launched from virtually anywhere, including silos, railways and fieldbases.

The Topol-M also have a naval SLBM relative called the SS-N-30 (Bulava) which will be fired from its 2-3 remaining Typhoon class SSBNs, as well as the Borey class which is still being built (2 submarines).

The SS-24 SCALPEL and the SS-18 SATAN is still good missiles, with a decent accuracy as well as yield. The SATAN is pretty old, but they have constantly updated them so that they are enjoying more accuracy than the first versions. The SCALPEL and SATAN are both silobased missiles, but I belive the former can be fired from special modificated railways.

Mini-lecture on the basis of the Ruskies missiles is hearby over! :p

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

I don't think Russia is a major worry to the United States, besides their poor security of their nukes. China is a more...threatening, threat. They have nukes too.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

The human population is too high, the the world too large to wipe us out as a species. We would survive, but there would be no economy and probably take decades if not centuries to recover if a full blown war were to break out.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

:agreed

I fully agree with Riles. Survivable, but not economical.

Re: Nuclear war: Cause, outcome, survivability
 

Well it's not much of an opinion more of a fact. We could survive due to our numbers and global spread. Some people *should* survive, or atleast there would be a good chanche of them suceeding.