No, but you forget that like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, it doesn't comes alone. The war disrupts the normal cycle of food production, destroys much of the stocks and transportation. After the war the chaos will make planting/harvesting food more difficult, the resulting famine makes everybody less able to stay healty. All this results in less people to plant the next harvest in the second year after the war. This would also be the time that farming equipment would give out due to lack of spare parts / fuel / tires etc.
Would the world have survived a nuclear war in 1983?
- Thread starter Atzyn
- Start date
In America perhaps. Downunder we have a Government that listens to and acts upon scientific advice. We had a medical system that is geared to look after the people. In the 1980s, Australia was largely self-sufficient in food stuffs, medical stuffs, machinery and equipment. I can see Australia being set back about 30-50 years at most.
Sorry I disagree on the idea that tech will survive beca we have so many people that know so much.
In the interconnected world we live in today once we hit a level of destruction such as a full scale worse case WW3 we are going to see our supply chain not just damaged like it was with Covid, nor even ‘broken” we are going to see it shattered.
And know how to build something is irrelevant if you can’t get the parts, or the materials that are needed.
And today we get raw materials from dozens of countries to go to factories around the world that make sub assemblies that then go to somewhere else to put together before the item is shipped somewhere else to build whatever.
Just look at a simple house wiring. You need the heavy electrical cable into the house that is usually NOT copper, you need a power panel, and all the Breakers that are used in it then you need the copper cable , the various boxes that are used to house outlets and lights and what have you, then we need the outlets and the switches and the light fixtures (that are often LED now).
keep in mind that the breakers are complicated devises made of injected plastic parts and metal marts (often a couple different alloys) and all assembled in complicated jigs, the also use various “spring like” devises. Then we get to the cable, we need the copper wires the “plastic“ and paper that is around the indi wires and then the exterior sheathing that goes around all of that.
So we need metals, spring metals, plastics, of many different versions and paper. Plus the factories to process this and then make the stuff needed.
And you think that just because I have an electrician we are good to go?
Sorry but no. And we can’t fall back to earlier tech either as we don’t know how to make that either and even that tech takes a tech base to keep it going. There was a reason why the Industrial Revolution happened, You had interealated technology that could support and build on each other, you had the tech to harvest the natural resources, the tech to transport the resources the tech to process the resources and then more that to the factories that could build stuff, these factories which required the tech to build the factories and all the machines that they used and don’t forget the tech and factories to build the machines that the factories used and so on and so on.
As For using existing tech, how do you keep it running? We don’t fix things now days we replace them. When the battery dies in your car what are you going to do? When some critical part in the oil refinery fails and the factory that made it is a pile of glass and. Ash what are you going to do?
No our technology and our production and our world is so interconnected that when you blow huge chunks to pieces with a full scale nuclear exchange you are not going yo keep it going.
And don’t forget that with that nuclear exchange we also are losing huge chunks of the power grid. Anyone remember the blackout that hit the Eastern part of the US about 20 years ago? And that was a cascade from a single failure point, think what will happen after WW3. And without a steady source of electricity and gas what are you doing for food and water and warmth in the winter? Most homes can’t be heated without there. Furnaces. So you will lose a lot of the people that survive the nuclear exchange simply because they live to far from a food source.
No this is going to snowball and e are going to lose most of the population and we will end up back at a pre 1800 tech level by the time we stop the slide. It MAY come back faster as the knowledge may survive in books and what have you so we won’t need to invent or discover as much but we will need to rebuild. But some things will need to be rediscovered,
So I stand by my statement that Humans will survive but our modern technology is doomed.
In the interconnected world we live in today once we hit a level of destruction such as a full scale worse case WW3 we are going to see our supply chain not just damaged like it was with Covid, nor even ‘broken” we are going to see it shattered.
And know how to build something is irrelevant if you can’t get the parts, or the materials that are needed.
And today we get raw materials from dozens of countries to go to factories around the world that make sub assemblies that then go to somewhere else to put together before the item is shipped somewhere else to build whatever.
Just look at a simple house wiring. You need the heavy electrical cable into the house that is usually NOT copper, you need a power panel, and all the Breakers that are used in it then you need the copper cable , the various boxes that are used to house outlets and lights and what have you, then we need the outlets and the switches and the light fixtures (that are often LED now).
keep in mind that the breakers are complicated devises made of injected plastic parts and metal marts (often a couple different alloys) and all assembled in complicated jigs, the also use various “spring like” devises. Then we get to the cable, we need the copper wires the “plastic“ and paper that is around the indi wires and then the exterior sheathing that goes around all of that.
So we need metals, spring metals, plastics, of many different versions and paper. Plus the factories to process this and then make the stuff needed.
And you think that just because I have an electrician we are good to go?
Sorry but no. And we can’t fall back to earlier tech either as we don’t know how to make that either and even that tech takes a tech base to keep it going. There was a reason why the Industrial Revolution happened, You had interealated technology that could support and build on each other, you had the tech to harvest the natural resources, the tech to transport the resources the tech to process the resources and then more that to the factories that could build stuff, these factories which required the tech to build the factories and all the machines that they used and don’t forget the tech and factories to build the machines that the factories used and so on and so on.
As For using existing tech, how do you keep it running? We don’t fix things now days we replace them. When the battery dies in your car what are you going to do? When some critical part in the oil refinery fails and the factory that made it is a pile of glass and. Ash what are you going to do?
No our technology and our production and our world is so interconnected that when you blow huge chunks to pieces with a full scale nuclear exchange you are not going yo keep it going.
And don’t forget that with that nuclear exchange we also are losing huge chunks of the power grid. Anyone remember the blackout that hit the Eastern part of the US about 20 years ago? And that was a cascade from a single failure point, think what will happen after WW3. And without a steady source of electricity and gas what are you doing for food and water and warmth in the winter? Most homes can’t be heated without there. Furnaces. So you will lose a lot of the people that survive the nuclear exchange simply because they live to far from a food source.
No this is going to snowball and e are going to lose most of the population and we will end up back at a pre 1800 tech level by the time we stop the slide. It MAY come back faster as the knowledge may survive in books and what have you so we won’t need to invent or discover as much but we will need to rebuild. But some things will need to be rediscovered,
So I stand by my statement that Humans will survive but our modern technology is doomed.
Looking forward to the Brazilian union which unites South America then conquers the world havingnotbern hit by any nuclear weapons.
Bavarian Raven
Banned
Except weaponized diseases can have a 90% death rate - and thats with a working first world health care system. If even 10% of the leaked details about what the Russians cooked up are true, those biological weapons are the things of nightmares. They make the nukes look like kids toys.
Bavarian Raven
Banned
Theyll be hit for precisely that reason. Plus biological weapons know no boundaries.
The Southern Hemisphere (esp. South America, Southeast Asia, and Australasia) will have to learn how to live without the Northern Hemisphere.
All that I can say other than this, is that 1983: Doomsday is way too idealistic and optimistic.
All that I can say other than this, is that 1983: Doomsday is way too idealistic and optimistic.
There is a thread discussing and critiquing it here:
1983: Doomsday - What are your opinions on this fictional world after a nuclear exchange in 1983?
If you don't know what that 1983: Doomsday is, check this link https://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/1983:_Doomsday. Stanislav Petrov was at the Nuclear Bunker at the time and was instead replaced by somebody who actually believed the United States launched nuclear warheads straight to Soviet...
www.alternatehistory.com
Only this is supposed to take place in 1983, not 2023, when most countries still were far less dependent on international supply lines than today. Most cars e.g. still didn't have that many electronic parts and virtually every manufacturer still produced carburator motors that could do completely without any. ABS and airbags were only a thing in a few select luxury cars as was air conditioning, power steering, power seats or power windows, on most compact cars it wasn't even an option.
No trchnology was not independent in 1983. It was more indepented then it is now but that is not saying it is infependent,
I lived my whole live around Detroit. half my family wored for the auto conpanies and my dad was a mechanic.
And by the time i got my drivers liscense in the mid 80s you already had German, Canadian and Japanese (to name but three) companies provding parts. All sorts of parts (especially electronics) where being shipped all around the world.
It was 1985 when the 1911 was replaced.
And dont forget that the food chain is often relient on being aboe to import at least part of your food from elsewhere when your winter sets in. No one in Michigan is storring fruits and meats to last the winter, If the trucks stoppped rolling no more food. Same holds true of much of the. rest of the world.
And all of that is besides the point. No major country is getting out of WW3 in 1983 unscathed. That was the height of MAD. Everyone of any size is getting hit to one degree or another. And those hits will put paid to advanced tech.
First the electric grid and food production would have to be restored, and where are you getting enough raw meterials to do that? Very few countries in the world have the raw meterials to kerp its 1980s industries running. The US is better them most but even 1983 US had missing stuff it needed. Good luck getting rubber for instance and no synthetic was not up to doing everything in 1983 from either the science to do everything that real rubber could nor from being able to be made in volumn and once your oil and chemical supply is hit good luck making synthetic rubber,
There is a resaon why embargos hurt counties. Because they need something from outside there boarders.
It takes tens of thousand's of factories to keep a 1980# tech going as it is all dependent on each other, You need A to build X and X for B and B for G and G for Z and Z for Y and Y for A and so on amd so forth. There is a reason why the industrial revolution took so long. You need (for example) very accurate machine tools to build just about anything that exists. But you also need them to build Accurate machine tools.
And 1880s tech is no easier to support. Go visit a working museum and see how conplicated this stuff was.
Everything is interconnected.
Take the change in Christmas tree orniments from 1910 to 1960. A span of 50 years. We see a LOT more ornment on christmas trees and many (most?) of these new orniments are the delacte glass ornimdnts sometime call murcury ornimdnts or what every. We all know them the are blown glass really thin and they blow up when dropped n hard surfaces. Why did these become so redily available and inexpensive at that time? I will give you a hint, those bulbs breack/explode just like light bulbs. why? Because they basicly ARE light bulbs. the same basic tech needed to build a light bulbs glass component is what is used to make those christmass orniments. Because it is all related and inter connected,
So what is you country doing to lights? You need electricity with all that involves from know how to run amd maintain the generators and lines yo the fuel to run the generators the factory to build the wires the control systems the generators and the vehicals that move all that. dont forget the explosives to mine the coal or the refinery for the oil or the gas plant. Hech where are you getting lubricants? You need some pretty diverse lubricants in a machine shop. And you need trained skilled people to run it all.
Back in the 1930s the C&O hired a company to fix crackes in the frames of it T-1 class engines. The conpany somehow welded them together using a version of but that technology was basicly lost as no one needs it anymore. In WW3 you will lose trchnology simply by losing the folks with the knowledge that does mot get writen down. I have the EXACT track layout of the C&O served coal mine of Kaymoor. I have access to Railroad archives and hand books from the time, all the documentation and modern Rairoad engineers, but we are not sure why the track layout was what it was. It seams illogical to us, but they built itvthat way for a reason. But the reason was never writen down. Perhaps if we have engineers and conductirs and mine. personell run a recreation of it for 10 years or ao we will relearn what they did write down.
Another example. The engines used on the Saturn 5 can not be built today., without a huge amount of work reinventing them. Why? because we dont build that way anymore and the skills of that day are all but gone, and the folks building it didnt leave notes behind of what they thought was common knowledge.
Between the lose of trch yo keep things running, the transportation issues and the lsoe of onowledge with the deaths a WW3 would cause you are blowing giugantic holes in your tech base that you have to work around and fast. You need yo get your Electric, you oil/gas and your food and your transportation all back up and running. As well as every single manufacturer of every criticle part for everything involved inall of this and you have yo do it before aomething fails that you dontvhave a spare part for. Good luck with that.
Oh and where are you getting the FOOD to feed everyone until you get the crops planted and harvested? Those coolers only work if you keep power to them and you only have so many days if food on hand in any city.
one final thought. Lets say you have a guy with the skill to fix your critical machine (you pick, whatever machine you MUST have) but this guy is a diabetic dependent in insoline. Can he pass on hsi skills and knowledge to a replacement before hsi dibetes kills him because your local insulin manufacturing facility was destroyed in the war? Heck maybe you have an insuline plant, but do you have a way to build needles or test his blood sugar? So this guy is on a short window to try and train a replacement. Good luck with that. And remember. In a world like Post WW3 everything you use and build and eat and ware is criticle.
Nope, i am aorry but a full out 1983 WW3 is going to see tech slide back to subsistance farming level and slide quickly.
As Albert Einstien supposadly said. I know not what weapons WW3 will be foght with but WW4 will be foght with Sticks and Stones.
I lived my whole live around Detroit. half my family wored for the auto conpanies and my dad was a mechanic.
And by the time i got my drivers liscense in the mid 80s you already had German, Canadian and Japanese (to name but three) companies provding parts. All sorts of parts (especially electronics) where being shipped all around the world.
It was 1985 when the 1911 was replaced.
And dont forget that the food chain is often relient on being aboe to import at least part of your food from elsewhere when your winter sets in. No one in Michigan is storring fruits and meats to last the winter, If the trucks stoppped rolling no more food. Same holds true of much of the. rest of the world.
And all of that is besides the point. No major country is getting out of WW3 in 1983 unscathed. That was the height of MAD. Everyone of any size is getting hit to one degree or another. And those hits will put paid to advanced tech.
First the electric grid and food production would have to be restored, and where are you getting enough raw meterials to do that? Very few countries in the world have the raw meterials to kerp its 1980s industries running. The US is better them most but even 1983 US had missing stuff it needed. Good luck getting rubber for instance and no synthetic was not up to doing everything in 1983 from either the science to do everything that real rubber could nor from being able to be made in volumn and once your oil and chemical supply is hit good luck making synthetic rubber,
There is a resaon why embargos hurt counties. Because they need something from outside there boarders.
It takes tens of thousand's of factories to keep a 1980# tech going as it is all dependent on each other, You need A to build X and X for B and B for G and G for Z and Z for Y and Y for A and so on amd so forth. There is a reason why the industrial revolution took so long. You need (for example) very accurate machine tools to build just about anything that exists. But you also need them to build Accurate machine tools.
And 1880s tech is no easier to support. Go visit a working museum and see how conplicated this stuff was.
Everything is interconnected.
Take the change in Christmas tree orniments from 1910 to 1960. A span of 50 years. We see a LOT more ornment on christmas trees and many (most?) of these new orniments are the delacte glass ornimdnts sometime call murcury ornimdnts or what every. We all know them the are blown glass really thin and they blow up when dropped n hard surfaces. Why did these become so redily available and inexpensive at that time? I will give you a hint, those bulbs breack/explode just like light bulbs. why? Because they basicly ARE light bulbs. the same basic tech needed to build a light bulbs glass component is what is used to make those christmass orniments. Because it is all related and inter connected,
So what is you country doing to lights? You need electricity with all that involves from know how to run amd maintain the generators and lines yo the fuel to run the generators the factory to build the wires the control systems the generators and the vehicals that move all that. dont forget the explosives to mine the coal or the refinery for the oil or the gas plant. Hech where are you getting lubricants? You need some pretty diverse lubricants in a machine shop. And you need trained skilled people to run it all.
Back in the 1930s the C&O hired a company to fix crackes in the frames of it T-1 class engines. The conpany somehow welded them together using a version of but that technology was basicly lost as no one needs it anymore. In WW3 you will lose trchnology simply by losing the folks with the knowledge that does mot get writen down. I have the EXACT track layout of the C&O served coal mine of Kaymoor. I have access to Railroad archives and hand books from the time, all the documentation and modern Rairoad engineers, but we are not sure why the track layout was what it was. It seams illogical to us, but they built itvthat way for a reason. But the reason was never writen down. Perhaps if we have engineers and conductirs and mine. personell run a recreation of it for 10 years or ao we will relearn what they did write down.
Another example. The engines used on the Saturn 5 can not be built today., without a huge amount of work reinventing them. Why? because we dont build that way anymore and the skills of that day are all but gone, and the folks building it didnt leave notes behind of what they thought was common knowledge.
Between the lose of trch yo keep things running, the transportation issues and the lsoe of onowledge with the deaths a WW3 would cause you are blowing giugantic holes in your tech base that you have to work around and fast. You need yo get your Electric, you oil/gas and your food and your transportation all back up and running. As well as every single manufacturer of every criticle part for everything involved inall of this and you have yo do it before aomething fails that you dontvhave a spare part for. Good luck with that.
Oh and where are you getting the FOOD to feed everyone until you get the crops planted and harvested? Those coolers only work if you keep power to them and you only have so many days if food on hand in any city.
one final thought. Lets say you have a guy with the skill to fix your critical machine (you pick, whatever machine you MUST have) but this guy is a diabetic dependent in insoline. Can he pass on hsi skills and knowledge to a replacement before hsi dibetes kills him because your local insulin manufacturing facility was destroyed in the war? Heck maybe you have an insuline plant, but do you have a way to build needles or test his blood sugar? So this guy is on a short window to try and train a replacement. Good luck with that. And remember. In a world like Post WW3 everything you use and build and eat and ware is criticle.
Nope, i am aorry but a full out 1983 WW3 is going to see tech slide back to subsistance farming level and slide quickly.
As Albert Einstien supposadly said. I know not what weapons WW3 will be foght with but WW4 will be foght with Sticks and Stones.
By the Way…. 1983 had a lot more international sales and importation then you seam to think.
Go listen to the Oak Ridge Boys song “My Baby is American Made”. It is a song where the person singing it points out how much stuff he owns is foreign made but is Girl is pur 100% USA.
The aong references auch things as his. Car, Video Game, TV, Blue Jeans, etc.
This song came. out in 1983. it hit #1 on the country charts and 72 on hot 100 in the US and hit #12 in Canada. so yes globalism was already pretty significant in 1983. In the late 90s i worked for a large steel company and it had been shrinking for decades, Due to foreign competition.
Go listen to the Oak Ridge Boys song “My Baby is American Made”. It is a song where the person singing it points out how much stuff he owns is foreign made but is Girl is pur 100% USA.
The aong references auch things as his. Car, Video Game, TV, Blue Jeans, etc.
This song came. out in 1983. it hit #1 on the country charts and 72 on hot 100 in the US and hit #12 in Canada. so yes globalism was already pretty significant in 1983. In the late 90s i worked for a large steel company and it had been shrinking for decades, Due to foreign competition.
Pretty much like the estimates made by the 1970s. Expect full MAD.
Cody of the Alternate Hub did a video regarding the Petrov Incident back:
Cody of the Alternate Hub did a video regarding the Petrov Incident back:
On the other hand, here are some related threads to 1983 nuclear war scenarios.
Similar threads of yours from 2016:
Some of these threads date back to 2007.
Full-fledged timelines:
Similar threads of yours from 2016:
Recovery time from 1983 World War Three
This is sort of a companion thread to my one on the Cuban Missile War one: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/recovery-time-from-1962-world-war-three.385683/ Assume Able Archer and/or Petrov not on duty results in a sudden nuclear exchange. Assume worst plausible case. How long...
www.alternatehistory.com
Some of these threads date back to 2007.
Able Archer leads to War.....
In early november 1983,during a Nato exercise known as Able Archer,American and British monitors were alarmed to see a surge in communications between Eatern Bloc Countries which seemed to indicate the possibility of an imminent attack by the Soviet Union and its allies.It was no illusion,the...
www.alternatehistory.com
Could the Able Archer exercise have lead to nuclear war?
In 1983, at a time of high Cold War tensions, NATO engaged in a military exercise called Able Archer, which simulated the lead-up to a nuclear strike on the USSR. Soviet intelligence seems to have mistakenly interpreted these exercises as a cover for an actual nuclear strike and made...
www.alternatehistory.com
Able Archer 83 & Operation Ryan
Now Ive been been reading up on nuclear Pod's since reading the excellent Protect & Survive thread and also on Doomsday 1983, both of which would differ from this POD though at the same time frame and reasons. P&S assumes a slow build in tensions and been honest some of Doomsday 1983 seems...
www.alternatehistory.com
How close we came to nuclear war in 1983
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/wargames-for-real-how-one-1983-exercise-nearly-triggered-wwiii/
www.alternatehistory.com
1983 Cold War heats up
1983 - The cold War between US/Nato vs Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact was entering a dangerous phase Brezhnev had died in November 1982 and been succeeded by Andropov. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl were challenging the Soviet Empire Reagan had called the Soviet Union an "EVIL...
www.alternatehistory.com
Full-fledged timelines:
Protect and Survive: A Timeline
I: Nuclear Explosions Explained They are like ordinary explosions, only many times more powerful. It is academic to argue whether the conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was inevitable. Such geo-political and philosophical arguments are beyond the scope of this study, which attempts...
www.alternatehistory.com
ABLE ARCHER 83: Timeline of a Third World War in 1983
My rules for a Alternative History of World War III Writing an alternative history of an hypothetical World War III is a very difficult task, mainly because there is an over-production of fictions, models an hypothesis on what it could have been. Every historian or alt-historian has his own...
www.alternatehistory.com
Seven Days to the River Rhine: the Third World War - a TL
I've been working on something new for a while and today I feel ready to post the first small piece of this TL. The topic is the outbreak of a Third World War in 1983, escalating into a full nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Seven Days to the River Rhine: the Third World War...
www.alternatehistory.com
Yeah videos like this one here has done a lot to change my overall opinion on the true threat of Nuclear winter.
The actual main source of death in the aftermath of world war 3 will in my opinion be mainly caused from biological weapons of mass destruction or be indirectly caused by the nation or state collapsing into anarchy and being unable to maintain and support what's left of its healthcare system and the law enforcement, mass migration and starvation during the aftermath will also be leading causes of death, radiation from the nuclear bombs alongside with black rain will lead to a lot of deaths as well, but most of the bombs will be used in air-burst attacks to maximize the destruction of the explosion, which will significantly reduce the amount of harmful levels of radiation being carried in the wind, so only targeted areas with lots of nuclear missile silos and military bunkers will be dangerous to walk outside after the bombs fall.
It's grim. Haunting, compelling, but not for the faint hearted. Ideal for nuclear holocaust fiction fans.
Edited to add that there was a tv adaptation in the 1960s by the BBC, as part of the anthology series Out of the Unknown and directed by Rudolph Cartier. It was on YouTube.
Edited to add that there was a tv adaptation in the 1960s by the BBC, as part of the anthology series Out of the Unknown and directed by Rudolph Cartier. It was on YouTube.
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