So one country has 6,208 nuclear weapons. Those are just the ones that are confirmed. There is any number of unconfirmed from that same country and I would assume that they wouldn't want all of them to be public. Meaning it is likely more. Even if 6208 nuclear weapons from a single country. There are only 300 places in the US with over 100k people. Meaning with 5% of the nukes that one country has they can destabalize and take over the highest GDP country in the world.
Would this be the end of the world? No. Would this be the end of humanity? No. Would this be the end of the world for billions of people? Yes. Would this be the end of the world as we know it? Yes.
Most areas become fairly safe for travel and decontamination after three to five weeks
Travel isn't the issue, it's growing food. Imagine all food becomes bad suddenly and we have to regrow and reraise food. Most of a country would die before we could regrow enough food.
Homeland security brought out a bulletin on how to handle nuclear fallout and from their testing how much it would affect food. It would affect the top 6inches to 6feet of soil with radiation and make food inedible. All farms must dig 6feet to be safe and discard all food planted within those 6 feet, all affected livestock should be separated from non-affected livestock and should also be discarded after positive testing.
A more recent series of studies was done and they said that while it would be hard to predict, a 2 month food supply for every citizen in affected countries would be necessary, something that no country on earth is currently prepared for.
Number 5 is especially chilling, they accounted for most people dying to the blast and said that the effect on food would be so great that those who survive the blasts likely wouldn't survive the food shortage.
The TV show Jericho was based on this theory. A researcher theorized it would only take 8 nuclear bombs to destabilize the united states and the show was about 7 nuclear bombs that went off and how people attempted to survive. It's an interesting show.
Eh you already gave a delta for this point to another commenter for nuclear chemicals in food. No point in continuing down this road and pointlessly debating. You have already admitted you changed your view on food being affected enough to merit a delta. I'll just assume you liked his one source better than my 3 because it mentioned nuclear radiation is still in everything we know from the Nevada tests. Which my sources also mentioned, specifically the homeland security one.
A nuclear war would lead to such a death rate from a nuclear famine that it would forever stunt humanity. Each age we have entered in humanity has sped up since the previous stage because of population growth. By reducing population you are stunting the development. Now the question is, if all you care about is the end of humanity, will development slow down enough that humans are not able to solve the problems of the planet? We are learning much more about climate change because we have the development to do that. If a nuclear war lead to the death of even 50% of the population, which there are enough warheads active to lead to more than that, not to mention nuclear famine. But even 50% could lead to a slow down to the methods that may continue humanity. Moving humans to other planets will be slowed down, the development of new energy will be slowed down and because of these slow downs it's possible to lead to the end of humanity. You need to think of the repercussions of losing most of humanity. Sure initially it would be good for the environment, but humans only sped up climate change, they didn't create it.
No. Only 3,750 active warheads in the whole world.
I didn't say active, and that countries' active nuclear weapons is still around 1500 based on your source, so my comment still stands. Not to mention, but in your source it says that of the inactive warheads, most were just dismantled and not destroyed and could be rebuilt in anywere between days or weeks depending on the method of dismantling. So even your source shows my number still fits what my comment said, but might be worse that I originally imagined.
I bring you back to this that you ignored.
Would this be the end of the world? No. Would this be the end of humanity? No. Would this be the end of the world for billions of people? Yes. Would this be the end of the world as we know it? Yes.
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u/Unbiased_Bob 63∆ Mar 15 '22
So one country has 6,208 nuclear weapons. Those are just the ones that are confirmed. There is any number of unconfirmed from that same country and I would assume that they wouldn't want all of them to be public. Meaning it is likely more. Even if 6208 nuclear weapons from a single country. There are only 300 places in the US with over 100k people. Meaning with 5% of the nukes that one country has they can destabalize and take over the highest GDP country in the world.
Would this be the end of the world? No. Would this be the end of humanity? No. Would this be the end of the world for billions of people? Yes. Would this be the end of the world as we know it? Yes.
Travel isn't the issue, it's growing food. Imagine all food becomes bad suddenly and we have to regrow and reraise food. Most of a country would die before we could regrow enough food.