Micróbio de Marte
Banned
Tech will definitely survive in some capacity. There's too much knowledge around. But it will become more limited in it's scope.
The idea that we would turn into cavemen after a nuclear war is sensationalistic.
Would the world have survived a nuclear war in 1983?
- Thread starter Atzyn
- Start date
The idea that we would turn into cavemen after a nuclear war is sensationalistic.
Ultimately we don't know. Each nuclear power likely has (and had) more than one target set, and which ones would be used would depend on the context of the exchange. The war plans which detail those target sets are in the 'burn before reading' level of classification and will likely never be declassified. Everything, with one exception, is someone's guess at what someone else's target plans might be.
The one exception is the infamous '1956 SAC war plan' - and even that is a list of what SAC would like to target in 1959, if it had enough weapons. It was part of a budgeting exercise to determine how many weapons the US should produce, which isn't quite the same thing as an actual war plan. It's still the closest that we're likely to get.
From a writer's point of view, it's reasonable to justify any particular city as being spared because (a) it didn't make the cut for a weapon, or (b) the weapon that was aimed at it never made it, either because it didn't work properly, or someone intercepted it.
The world in general.... probably not as badly off as the pessimists forecast, but not as well off as the optimists hoped. The more developed countries would all get hit - yes, including Australia, though probably by low single digit numbers of obsolescent weapons. The less well developed countries would be very vulnerable to cooling effects and to disruption of global supply chains.
That last one is key. With the destruction of most major transport and manufacturing centres, anything which can't be done locally as a cottage industry will struggle. Including medicines, fertilisers, pesticides, and agricultural machinery. In a lot of respects, it's back to the early 19th century until industry and trade can be rebuilt.
SWAG - total deaths are a couple of hundred million to a billion from direct effects, and probably another billion from subsequent famine and disease. Technological civilisation will continue, after a fashion, but recovery will be uneven.
Cavemen no, but maybe 17th-19th century folk for a while.
The planet is probably okay.
Beyond that it's a matter of personal beliefs, of potential argument, and of possible moderator actions since this is the post-1900 forum and there are limits to how heated disputes are supposed to get here...
We don’t know for certain but we can still say with reasonable certainty that not every single town and city in the US would be hit by nuclear weapons. The USSR didn’t have enough ICBMs to plausibly do that even in the 1980s. Unless St. Cloud had something that could be reasonably described as a vital target in the 1980s (nuclear power plant, military base, industry etc) I think it would have been unscathed. The same can’t be said for other areas in Minnesota of course.
Indeed, though how bad it would get would very much depend on your location. Central Europe would've been a death zone with so much radiation from tactical nukes that even those who survived the direct impacts mostly perishing due to radiation levels and fallout, which would've heavily impacted neutral countries like Austria, Switzerland or Sweden as well. Depending on the area I'd expect a 80% to 90+% long term casualty rate for West and East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Benelux countries. France and the UK might get away with 70 to 80%, just like European Russia. Norway, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece with 50% to 70%, just like the CONUS and the PRC. On the other hand South America, Africa, Australia and Oceania would've suffered few if any direct hits and would mostly be affected indirectly. Depending on how self-sufficient they were they'd suffer casualty rates from below 10% to at most 30%.
I live 1983 near Town of Liege, Belgium, my chances to survive this War was nil.
I was surrounded by Primary and secondary Targets, i think was around 37 targets in the Euregio.
several Airports, Airbases, Military installation (NATO, Belgium, Netherlands and Germans)
if wind blow right Liege would get Fallout from Brussels, were NATO HQ was hit by ground burst nukes, to take out deep bunkers.
Same goes for several large Belgium bunkers, were one is near Liege.
In 1962 or better 1961, i would had much better chances to survive those nuclear War.
do less numbers of Nukes to use compare to 1983 overkill.
It depend several factors.
Are spare part available and even manufacture local, you have the chance.
but if you power plant need spare part form factory, 20000 km away in Japan, what is vaporise by nuclear attack.
your in trouble...
Other issue keep knowledge around, if you got right books and teacher to learn people, civilisation prevalence local.
There will be decline of Technology, do collapse of Supply line and lack of spare part.
i think there will be a Mad Max era after WW3 were last around 40 years, until pre War Technology failed of old age.
Here depends how much knowledge is preserve and skilled craftsmen with resources are available.
Then the Post Mad Max era, could restart on tech-level of 1930s down to 1810s
But certain not in stone age levels !
I live in central New Jersey. It’s roughly 100 miles from New York City to Philadelphia, and if you draw a line between the two, the following are probable targets around that line in 1983:
- NYC
- LaGuardia Airport
- JFK Airport
- Picatinny Arsenal
- Newark Airport
- Secaucus shipping port and nearby oil/gasoline storage tank farms
- Earle Naval Weapons Station. One pier location on the shore and the larger storage facility 15 miles inland (rumored to store Nuclear Weapons)
- Bell Laboratories
- Lakehurst Naval Air Station
- McGuire AFB
- Fort Dix
- Fort Monmouth
- Philadelphia
Plus Grumman is on Long Island, and Groton is about 150 north.
So yeah, I would have been gone in the first few seconds, and there probably would have been a new bay between Pennsylvania and New York.
Ric350
- NYC
- LaGuardia Airport
- JFK Airport
- Picatinny Arsenal
- Newark Airport
- Secaucus shipping port and nearby oil/gasoline storage tank farms
- Earle Naval Weapons Station. One pier location on the shore and the larger storage facility 15 miles inland (rumored to store Nuclear Weapons)
- Bell Laboratories
- Lakehurst Naval Air Station
- McGuire AFB
- Fort Dix
- Fort Monmouth
- Philadelphia
Plus Grumman is on Long Island, and Groton is about 150 north.
So yeah, I would have been gone in the first few seconds, and there probably would have been a new bay between Pennsylvania and New York.
Ric350
Yes, it would have. There are no nuclear bombs in Africa, there are no nuclear weapons in South America or Latin America, or the South Pacific. The nuclear bombs are specifically focused on the middle east, Europe, Russia, and the United States. Also, India, China, Pakistan and Israel. There are a lot of places where the bombs will not fall.
Fundamentally, it’s a “here be dragons” situation. We just don’t know exactly how many of the systems - mechanical, human, and natural - will react to a large-scale nuclear war. How many warheads successfully launch? How many detonate? Against what target sets? How many cities see firestorms vs how many do not? How badly are communications hit? How much ash can the atmosphere take? This is just a fraction of the legions and legions of unknowns clawing at the gateway.
Because of this, I see the post-nuclear environment in a large-scale exchange as a curved sliding scale of possibilities. Call it the "nuclear horseshoe" if you will, at least as far as probability goes. On the far end of the scale, you have "total human extinction" from all the second-order effects: nuclear winter, disease outbreaks, famines, civil breakdown, etc. On the near end, you have a "brokenback war" scenario, where due to a variety of factors, the nukes maul the countries involved but don't actually collapse them (at least... not immediately), leaving them with just enough to sort out the remains and keep fighting. Both of these are possible - in so far as we can tell - but seem unlikely.
Between these two improbables we have varying levels of national/societal collapse, with all the attendant human dieback that entails. This could range from only the directly engaged countries collapsing, to second-order effects collapsing every nation outside regardless of proximity to the war. Most likely, what we'd see is something of a mix, with all the directly involved countries collapsing, second-order effects collapsing a number of the not-directly-involved, and the rest experiencing some period of instability, hardship, and probable reduction of living standards and technological base before managing to orient themselves. Naturally, the largest and most powerful of the survivor states in that last scenario would be the best positioned to dominate the post-nuclear world. Who they actually would be is a matter of speculation.
Because of this, I see the post-nuclear environment in a large-scale exchange as a curved sliding scale of possibilities. Call it the "nuclear horseshoe" if you will, at least as far as probability goes. On the far end of the scale, you have "total human extinction" from all the second-order effects: nuclear winter, disease outbreaks, famines, civil breakdown, etc. On the near end, you have a "brokenback war" scenario, where due to a variety of factors, the nukes maul the countries involved but don't actually collapse them (at least... not immediately), leaving them with just enough to sort out the remains and keep fighting. Both of these are possible - in so far as we can tell - but seem unlikely.
Between these two improbables we have varying levels of national/societal collapse, with all the attendant human dieback that entails. This could range from only the directly engaged countries collapsing, to second-order effects collapsing every nation outside regardless of proximity to the war. Most likely, what we'd see is something of a mix, with all the directly involved countries collapsing, second-order effects collapsing a number of the not-directly-involved, and the rest experiencing some period of instability, hardship, and probable reduction of living standards and technological base before managing to orient themselves. Naturally, the largest and most powerful of the survivor states in that last scenario would be the best positioned to dominate the post-nuclear world. Who they actually would be is a matter of speculation.
Who?, those that have food production (including fertilizers/seeds/equipment) / local energy sources / access to ores and the means to transport all of it.
Bavarian Raven
Banned
One thing you're all forgetting to mention is that a 1983 ww3 scenario, wouldn't just be nuclear - russia (and most certainly the USA despite what it might claim) would have used biological weapons as well. Weaponized pox, anthrax, and the gods only knows what else they would have unleashed from pandoras box. :/ The death toll from that, as they sweep across the globe would be much larger than that of the bombs. You could get a 80 to 90+ % death toll across the entire globe. :/ And these diseases would keep hitting the survivors as they (the pathogens) continue to mutate year after year... :/
While there would be a lot of deaths and destruction, even away from directly damaged areas, the biggest problem is likely the economic and social impact.
Many of us are reliant on complex distribution systems for distributing food, power etc.and these would very quickly fall apart. People were a lot less reliant on technology in the early 1980s but who had the space to grow enough food to cope with major shortages? how would people heat their homes, what happens when global and national banking and health services collapse?I'm reluctant to say much on current conflicts, but the Ukraine invasion led to severe global problems with grain and oil distribution, while the earlier Syrian civil war and Iraqi problems led to millions of refugee movements which caused big social and political upheavals, even in relatively wealthy and functioning countries.
Many of us are reliant on complex distribution systems for distributing food, power etc.and these would very quickly fall apart. People were a lot less reliant on technology in the early 1980s but who had the space to grow enough food to cope with major shortages? how would people heat their homes, what happens when global and national banking and health services collapse?I'm reluctant to say much on current conflicts, but the Ukraine invasion led to severe global problems with grain and oil distribution, while the earlier Syrian civil war and Iraqi problems led to millions of refugee movements which caused big social and political upheavals, even in relatively wealthy and functioning countries.
You are over-rating the death rates from disease. Most diseases usually have a death rate in the 30% range. The Black Death was exceptional having a death rate of approximately 40% where ever it struck. Influenza only had a death rate in the high 20s. Disease is not as effective as the proponents believe it to be.