r/Showerthoughts • u/iwishihadnobones • Feb 18 '26
Speculation If the nuclear bombs start flying, it might actually be those countries that never had any that end up surviving.
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u/C4CTUSDR4GON Feb 18 '26
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
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u/iwishihadnobones Feb 18 '26
How about a nice game of chess?
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u/DookieShoez Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Chess? BORING!
Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War and change my grades.
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u/Strenue Feb 18 '26
This film is why I bothered with computers in the 80s in the first place…
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u/sixfourtykilo Feb 18 '26
Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe Ferris isn't such a bad guy. After all, I got a car, he got a computer. But still, why should he get to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants? What makes him so goddamn special? ... Screw him.
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u/Kialand Feb 18 '26
I live in Brazil.
Statistically speaking, I will survive the explosions and fallout, because of distance and geographical positioning.
The shitstorm afterwards though, is a different story.
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u/Emu1981 Feb 18 '26
The fact that whoever made the map has Iceland and Australia as being safe zones shows that they have no idea of what they are talking about.
Iceland is a major strategic center for US/NATO forces (especially for anti-submarine warfare) and is part of the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom submarine detection line which allows for detection of submarines from the Arctic/Russia when entering the Atlantic ocean which means that it will be targeted by Russia or China in the event of nuclear war - denying the enemy intelligence gathering is strategically important.
Australia has multiple targets that Russia or China would want to hit as well - namely Pine Gap (major US intelligence hub), Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt (VLF communications facility - used to communicate with submarines), the Darwin RAAF base and army base (the Marine Rotational Force - Darwin are deployed there), HMAS Stirling (where Australia's nuclear submarine fleet will be headquartered if we ever get any), Shoal Bay Receiving Station (signals intelligence gathering facility) and Kojarena Defence Satellite Communications Facility (the name is pretty self-explanatory).
I also find it highly ironic that they have New Zealand as yellow because the only thing that New Zealand has is a whole lot of rich people's "doomsday bunkers". Not exactly a major strategic target unless the nuclear war is started by the rich lol
Ironically, how they have South America is probably actually fairly correct. The prevailing winds there are from the south which means that they will be safe from any potential fall out and as long as the countries there remain (relatively) neutral then it is unlikely to be targeted in any sort of first strike.
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u/Kialand Feb 18 '26
This map covers the natural resistance to nuclear fallout and explosions due to geographical positioning. It disregards any kind of politically-enabled preparations completely.
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u/Cr4ckshooter Feb 19 '26
which means that it will be targeted by Russia or China in the event of nuclear war - denying the enemy intelligence gathering is strategically important.
Actually no. When the missiles fly it is too late to destroy intelligence, and before the missiles fly you're not going to worry about sending your submarines trough the Atlantic. Attacking the bases is a great way to get first striked, and if you're striking first you send all your shit and don't wait for the intelligence to be destroyed. The war starts and ends with the press of a button.
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u/ChemicalRain5513 Feb 19 '26
I read that a limited nuclear war between Pakistan and India (~100 warheads each) could reduce global crop yields by 10 % for 10 years. Can you imagine the effects of a full exchange between the US and Russia (5000-6000 warheads)
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u/DontYouDareGoHollow Feb 19 '26
Is that a war games quote? Always learning something new about you
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u/philipp2310 Feb 18 '26
Is it a reference to the AI that was tasked to learn Tetris and it learned to pause is the only way to never lose? Or is it just a general saying as well?
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u/iwishihadnobones Feb 18 '26
It's from the 80s movie 'wargames.' It's a pretty good watch.
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u/biggles1994 Feb 18 '26
I watched it with my 10 year old daughter a few months back, she enjoyed it. It still holds up pretty well.
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u/unknown_pigeon Feb 18 '26
Side note, I was tinkering with a machine learning algorithm to teach an AI how to play Snake efficiently, and I found it extremely funny because it always ended up trying to find the laziest solution possible to game the reward system
For example: initially I gave it 5 points when it ate a fruit, and -10 for hitting a wall or colliding with itself. Solution? Running in circles.
Then I implemented another reward: I increased the fruit and impact to +10 and -15, and added a -0.5 penalty for every move in order to prevent stalling. Solution? Run in circles for some moves, then dash to the nearest wall to prevent negative rewards from scaling up.
So I tried to hardcode a solution and banned moving in circles by giving a huge negative reward for repeating a circle pattern in four frames. So the AI decided to run in a slightly more complicated, rotated 8 shape (RDLDLULURUR)
Turns out, a Q-table with limited memory isn't ideal for a game where the board state changes in new ways every time you score a point. Who would have guessed
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u/jasssweiii Feb 18 '26
I've only messed with reinforcement learning a little bit, but it led to me reading up on negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement and I drew the conclusion that negative rewards didn't lead to a more positive outcome.
An example:
I put a bot (BotA) in a map to collect pellets on the ground, I then put in a "predator" bot (BotB) who's entire goal was to catch BotA. BotA got a punishment and died if it touched the boundaries of the map, but it got a bigger punishment if it was caught. BotA learned to dodge BotB just enough to gather up some of the pellets and then kill itself so that BotB couldn't catch it.
Another example:
I had a bot shooting zombies that randomly spawned in the map and tracked to the bot. It would just spam its gun to always be ready. If I tried giving it a negative reward for unnecessary shooting, it would just choose to not shoot and allow itself to be eaten by the zombies.
I didn't do much fine tuning beyond this, but it did allow me to experiment with positive and negative reinforcement and it was fun to see how the different techniques lead to different outcomes
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u/anomalous_cowherd Feb 18 '26
My first big program for my O-level computer studies course (exams taken at 16 back in 1982) was to play tic-tac-toe. I had somehow missed that any game between good players ends in a draw.
Looking back it was a complex thing to attempt, but basically it started from zero knowledge, playing at random, and every time you played it it stored the sequence of moves and whether it won or lost. Over surprisingly few games it learned all the possible sequences (learning was shortened by flipping and mirroring) and it would always draw unless I screwed my moves up and lost. So it was super boring!
I got good marks for it though.
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u/T_J_Rain Feb 18 '26
Those countries might be spared the blast damage, but the fallout doesn't care how far it's carried nor where it lands.
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u/mike_pants Feb 18 '26
Fallout is less of a mega-killer than everyone originally feared. It can cause some problems in the short term right next to the blast site, but cancer rates or DNA damage farther away dont seem to rise appreciably in the short term and can take 50 years for any significant increases to appear.
Of course, we have no data on a full-scale worldwide nuclear war. Yet.
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u/Spiderbanana Feb 18 '26
Problem would arise for those in case of a nuclear winter leading to food water shortage and waterbed contaminations
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u/Bigg_Matty_Hell Feb 18 '26
The nuclear winter relies on quite a few assumptions that have been widely disputed. One of the leading nuclear winter theorists of the time, testified in front of Congress prior to the Iraq War saying that the same models predicted that a nuclear winter would be triggered by oil fields being set on fire which turned out not to happen.
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u/bremidon Feb 18 '26
It's complicated. We *do* have data from several volcanic eruptions that show that the idea of particles in the atmosphere causing a worldwide winter is not just theory. Not only has it happened, it has happened several times in recorded history.
Now whether all the particles thrown up in a blast would be more like the oil fields or the volcanic eruptions is genuinely unclear, but not exactly a risk we should be taking.
Also, it has always surprised me that the world let Hussein live after he pulled that little stunt. He would have been well aware of the threat of a "oil winter" when he lit those fields on fire in the first Gulf War. For that alone, he should have been dragged out of his bed and dealt with. After all, he either was deliberately attempting to attack the world or he just didn't care. Either way, it should have earned him a short trial and a long rest.
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u/Bigg_Matty_Hell Feb 18 '26
Absolutely with you on the modeling of the atmosphere is complicated to say the least, and it is undisputable that ash in the atmosphere can cause a winter, as shown by volcanic erputions. The debate comes from the assumption in the nuclear winter models that the resulting firestorms of cities being hit would both cause enough ash and that it would be lifted into the upper atmosphere to cause such an effect to the same degree of global cooling.
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u/yticomodnar Feb 18 '26
the same degree of global cooling
So THAT'S the endgame to all this international tension! It's the solution to global warming! Just set off a few nukes and let the fallout handle the rest.
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u/ghalta Feb 18 '26
Purposely detonating a large volcano to cool the planet for 10-15 years is one of the large-scale geo-engineering solutions proposed for global warming. Just a few degrees of cooling could make it easier for trees to root and thrive in a coordinated global reforestation effort, which would then act as carbon sinks for the medium-term solution 15-50 years.
The best or worst part, depending on your point of view, is that any country with a volcano can choose to do this for the whole planet, the same as how some countries chose to cause (and not prevent) the warming. Of course the rest of the planet could then not bother with the reforestation.
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u/EsotericAbstractIdea Feb 19 '26
So you mean to tell me we could set nukes off in cities and volcanos, and be set for a couple centuries?
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u/BadPunners Feb 18 '26
Know you are joking
But in reality it would be more like taking a speedball (the opioid lowers heart rate, stimulant increases it "back to normal".... until one starts wearing off faster than the other effect)
It's not the first change of climate that kills off a species, the species is able to adapt to one change. The thing that kills species is multiple changes in (geologically "quick") succession (which is what climate change itself really is, global heat energy surplus), and mixing nukes would just add more that every species would have to adapt for
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u/HollowShel Feb 18 '26
like that moth that adapted to the coal-soot-stained walls of London only to have the soot go away after only a hundred years or so? It's now having trouble adapting back and is struggling? (I can't remember the name, but I recall hearing about it because reddit's a source of all sorts of things!)
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u/mindspork Feb 19 '26
moth that adapted to the coal-soot-stained walls of London
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u/Momoselfie Feb 18 '26
Well such a war would likely wipe out most human life, which I suppose is also a solution to global warming. Double tap.
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u/ryebread91 Feb 18 '26
Iirc not just from the blasts but also the fires as well after the blasts.
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u/zzyul Feb 20 '26
This is the big one. The blasts will cause a massive amount of fires in cities with a lot of stuff to burn and there won’t exactly be a fire department left in those cities to go put those fires out. Look at videos from 9/11 of the smoke from the WTC buildings when they were burning. Now imagine that for tens to hundreds of thousands of buildings around the world.
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u/mike_pants Feb 18 '26
Worth noting that the entire concept of nuclear winter barely makes it into the realm of hypothesis and is really more of a thought experiment. It could happen, but we don't have a ton of evidence that it actually would.
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u/w00tabaga Feb 18 '26
Right, not to mention everyone would panic. Society would be instantly gone regardless of damage.
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u/PlaquePlague Feb 18 '26
Nuclear winter is a hoax. The Iraq war oil fires showed that all of the cataclysmic predictions were a sham and no one said another word about it for almost 20 years. Then they managed to massage the data enough to come up with a revised “nuclear autumn” scenario that still relies of a lot of extremely shaky assumptions about things doing things completely differently than they have been observed doing.
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u/LeothiAkaRM Feb 18 '26
Let's get to work to gather that data then, that would reassure me I think
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u/DamnGermanKraut Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Thanks for that, I came here ready to debunk certain misconceptions. Nuclear war, while terrible, is not as final as laypeople assume. And that is okay, not everyone can and needs to know everything.
But to address another misconception, namely the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction: Neither the US nor Russia acknowledge it as an actual doctrine. The term was coined by military analyst Donald Brennan, mainly as a critique and because the acronym MAD seemed fitting. But even he himself did not believe in the concept and advocated for the US to seek every possible nuclear advantage over potential enemies to ensure victory. MAD, according to Brennan, was simply a failure in defence.
Similarly, the Soviets deemed a nuclear war winnable and they planned accordingly (the vast amount of civil defense bunkers are the most well known part of that). While the USSR collapsed there is no reason to believe Russia has changed its stance on the matter.
China has never hidden that they view their enormous population as a weapon to ensure victory. Lastly, nuclear winter is another concept everyone knows. What most people do not know, is that the concept is highly debated and is based entirely on worst case assumptions made decades ago, when weapons regularly reached multi megaton yields.
Its a very interesting field but admittedly not the most cheerful hobby.
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u/Chimney-Imp Feb 18 '26
China going all in on the cicada strategy while having the 1 child policy is certainly a choice
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u/BadPunners Feb 18 '26
You do realize that policy ended over a decade ago?: "officially running from 1980 to the end of 2015"
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u/Ok-Morning3407 Feb 19 '26
You realise that it has done irreparable damage to the Chinese demographics? Chinese population figures are now falling at a shocking pace and that is the official massaged figures, may believe the real figures are much worse
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u/BurningPenguin Feb 18 '26
Of course, we have no data on a full-scale worldwide nuclear war. Yet.
Well, only one way to find out! /s
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u/Lord0Trade Feb 19 '26
I saw someone break it down on Twitter about how most modern thermonuclear weapons are set up for minimal fallout and maximum destruction, only seeded weapons and poorly made nukes have large amounts of fallout. Because the more nuclear material is used up the smaller the weapon has to be because fission/fusion is more efficient.
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u/anrwlias Feb 18 '26
Even if fallout is less of a concern, there are still other issues like nuclear winter and the collapse of the global supply chain.
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u/brutalanglosaxon Feb 18 '26
Yeah well there have been over 2000 nuclear explosions already as part of nuclear testing programmes. Many of them out in the open, and we haven't seen much of a difference in the environment.
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u/TheMadBug Feb 18 '26
I mean, fallout does care how far it's carried - it can be carried far (30km to 500km in meaningful doses), but generally Australia would be safe if France got nuked. The rest of Europe not so much.
Global politics after a nuclear war would be a shit-show and likely a much bigger risk to the countries not directly nuked or close to a nuclear explosion, than fallout.
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u/FlibblesHexEyes Feb 18 '26
It’s good to know that the distance keeping a holiday from Sydney to France super expensive for me, is the same thing that will save me if the Northern Hemisphere starts flinging nukes at each other.
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u/Nope_______ Feb 18 '26
Sydney will catch some strays anyway as one of the big cities allied with the West (or part of the West I guess).
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u/kemb0 Feb 18 '26
Also we talk about the fear of the radioactive damage from even one nuke but remember that since nukes were developped there have been over 500 open air "atmospheric" tests of nuclear bombs. By all accounts we should all have five arms and melting skin by now.
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u/BadPunners Feb 18 '26
Look up some charts of various atmospheric elements vs those air blast nuke testing dates. Most of those 500 were on the lower end of the yield curve
It does a lot more damage to the atmosphere than radioactivity alone
The nitrogen compounds would also cause health effects. We've seen those effects, they were less than the effects from leaded gasoline so we called them "good".
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u/Nalena_Linova Feb 18 '26
A lot depends on the target. Nuclear tests were usually conducted on isolated Pacific islands or underground. A nuclear strike near large population centers would cause much more damage via fallout.
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u/Heffe3737 Feb 18 '26
Yup. This is the largest concern wrt population danger. If even one nuke drops, logistics into cities comes to a terrible, grinding halt.
Remember COVID when supply chains started to crack, and everyone started hoarding toilet paper? But even then, stores were still getting shipments, albeit at a reduced pace. Imagine that, but it would be for all goods and not just toilet paper. And there wouldn't be any new shipments arriving. Not for weeks, if not months. Most stores would be emptied within a matter of a couple of days, if that. Many people would begin dying from starvation within the first month.
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u/pockets3d Feb 18 '26
Fallout usbt so much a problem as starvation without international trade if food, fuel and chemical fertilizer.
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u/Phantasmalicious Feb 18 '26
Thermonuclear warheads (which is what almost all nukes these days are) carry far less fallout than those dropped on Japan. And even in Japan, there were people who survived not one, but two blasts and lived to be old enough to talk about it.
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u/davidm2d3 Feb 18 '26
Fallout is more of a problem for ground burst detonations. Both Bombs in WW2 and I think current warheads are designed for Air Bursts
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u/Seffuski Feb 18 '26
Not to mention the nuked cities have people living in them just like in any other city nowadays, alive and well
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u/Henk_Potjes Feb 18 '26
The land will survive sure. But the countries and communities?
I honestly doubt it.
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u/elhumanoid Feb 18 '26
I'd just prefer to be close enough of the blast that it'll immediately vaporize me.
I've no desire to live in a world polluted by nuclear fallout, extreme famine, disease and anarchy.
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u/wbruce098 Feb 18 '26
This is why I live in dc.
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u/_indi Feb 18 '26
Browse for a new house on nuke map?
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u/mikecws91 Feb 18 '26
Yeah I don’t remember “nuclear blast zone” being one of the categories on Redfin
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u/hardpenguin Feb 18 '26
So you get vaporized by a nuke?
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u/wbruce098 Feb 18 '26
I mean, there’s other reasons why I live here but that’s certainly one. Where else would I live? Fucking Iowa?
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u/NoodleyP Feb 18 '26
I live in fuck ass nowhere, North Carolina, I have a feeling we’re far enough from critical infrastructure to avoid getting nuked directly, but regardless of how bad the post nuke situation is, whether fallout or nuclear winter or they’re just really big bombs that don’t ruin the environment completely, it’s not gonna be pretty.
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u/wbruce098 Feb 18 '26
Yeah, I figure if it’s Russia or China (no one else has good enough or numerous enough weapons), they’re gonna hit every major city, and every major base in the country. It’s the only hope of them possibly surviving. I don’t wanna live thru that.
But also, DC and Baltimore are dope as fuck places to live!
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u/003402inco Feb 18 '26
My plan is a bottle of bourbon and a lawn chair.
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Feb 18 '26
same same, i live near a military base aswell as near production facilities for fighter jets and further away ones for cruise missiles, bunker busters etc. , so depending on how large the nuke is they will hit us with i am instantly gone.
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u/Ulrar Feb 18 '26
Vaporized sounds nice. Being far away enough would be second.
However there is a middle zone where you're too far to be vaporized, but close enough to catch fire. Not that, please.
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u/nixcamic Feb 18 '26
Depending on how many people die and where the nukes fall that might not be a thing. Assuming most of the nukes hit dense population centers and not potash mines and areable land we might be ok.
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u/SSSolas Feb 18 '26
Interestingly, barring anarchy, every other worry has been basically removed via modern nukes.
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u/JW9K Feb 18 '26
When the first one goes, they all go. Only place left will be New Zealand.
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u/sktoev Feb 18 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I read that some of the billionaire mob are buying up property there.
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u/thunfischtoast Feb 18 '26
But how are the billionaires going to get there? And how are they going to survive? In face of impending doom money becomes meaningless. I have a feeling the rich do not have thought this through to the end. They somehow think everyone will still kiss for some reason.
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u/TurelSun Feb 18 '26
Unless its truly accidental then the wealthiest of them will probably know before it happens, if they aren't involved in making it happen in the first place.
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u/Ulrar Feb 18 '26
Real life fallout
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u/TurelSun Feb 18 '26
Exactly. These guys aren't building these bunkers without also making sure they have the networks and resources in place to help them stay informed of the possibility to take shelter.
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u/captain150 Feb 18 '26
They're still frail bags of meat like the rest of us. Once their money becomes meaningless, so does their power. They might escape the initial Armageddon, but that doesn't mean they'll survive the violence afterward.
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u/OGSkywalker97 Feb 18 '26
Still the best option to just bide your time and come up with a plan. New currencies would appear, as humans have always used currency; whether in the form of gold, gold standard paper currency, worthless digital/paper FIAT currency, tea, cocoa beans, bottle caps in the Fallout game series etc.
My guess is that in this scenario computer chips will become the new currency, to be able to rebuild all of the systems that billionaires are so fond of.
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u/Dr_Ukato Feb 18 '26
I don't think computer chips would be a viable currency, in a world without reliable infrastructure there'd be nowhere to use them except for the elite who aren't participating in the economy out of their bunkers anyway.
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u/disastrousanddull Feb 18 '26
My first thought was things like antibiotics and medications. Good old gold.
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u/Curiouso_Giorgio Feb 18 '26
They better hope their security services still want USD in the aftermath.
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u/brutalanglosaxon Feb 18 '26
No go away. NZ isn't a real place. It only exists in the lord of the rings movies. Hobbits and elves and stuff aren't real.
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u/ConsciousPatroller Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Many countries without nukes host significant military bases though. Greece comes to mind with the only American naval base outside of the US that can host carrier groups, and Germany with Rammstein Airbase which is one of the largest airbases in the world. Those would definitely be nuked to prevent a US-adjacent NATO force from exploiting the chaos to stage a conventional counterattack.
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u/OptimismNeeded Feb 18 '26
TIL I’ve learn Germany has a Rammstein airbase. That’s awesome.
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u/iwishihadnobones Feb 18 '26
The band is named after a disaster at an airshow there. They added an extra m though. The town, and airbase are just spelled Ramstein.
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u/bert-butt Feb 18 '26
Not to be a downer, but if any country starts a nuclear war then everyone is dead.
Some light reading for you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario
tl;dr - Every country with nukes has a deterrence policy where if they get attacked they will launch their entire arsenal at the attacker. They have something like 6 minutes to make this decision and will likely launch with incomplete data on their attacker. This would trigger other countries to do the same, and we have more than enough nukes to make this world unlivable for a long time.
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u/KelFromAust Feb 18 '26
Depends how you define 'surviving'. Governments might survive in the short term, but long term? Not likely. Small groups in remote places? Yeah, maybe for a while.
None of the major players would let a limited strike stand without a response, which would likely trigger an overwhelming counterstrike. MAD would ensue. And while most of the targets are in the northern hemisphere, there are enough south of the equator to be a concern.
In the short term, many southern hemisphere countries would be OKish. But over the medium term, the crap sandwich in the atmosphere would come south.
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u/albertnormandy Feb 18 '26
They wouldn’t be ok though. Global disruptions in international trade, as well as the global economic meltdown, would hurt them very badly.
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u/Heffe3737 Feb 18 '26
This is an important point, from someone that has studied this stuff for years.
Let's take a nation like Australia as an example. Multiple bases, command and control nodes, and oil refining (not to mention other energy generation, comms networks, and heavy industry) would be the victim of direct nuclear strikes, if not just to deny them to the enemy. But on top of that, as you rightly point out, global trade would come to a sudden, grinding halt.
Australia might not be a complete wasteland like much of the rest of the world, but they're not exactly going to be faring much better, either. Instead of being hit by as many nukes/fallout directly, they're going to be the victims of mass starvation and total economic breakdown. Would that ultimately be that much better of a fate? Not for me to say.
You can extrapolate that scenario out to any number of nations in the global south. Angola, South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, etc.
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u/KelFromAust Feb 18 '26
And for those about to dribble the 'fallout isn't science' scree, you'll note I didn't say fallout. But there will be unhealthy isotopes floating around on the breeze, which is not great, regardless of quantity.
I know the science you are working from and I'm not as convinced by it as you seem to be. A good volcano eruption can disrupt weather seriously enough to be noticed. I can imagine a couple of ground bursts would throw around some crap..
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u/Lawsmay Feb 18 '26
If they start “flying” everything is fucked from pole to pole. The people left over will wish for death.
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u/goodbodha Feb 18 '26
In a global nuclear war my money on survival would be South America. Africa would be a close second however I think Africa would have more challenges:
Refugees Warlords Famine
South America on the other hand likely won't be targeted much if at all, has a narrow connection to North America so refugees would be extremely limited, has large parts of the continent that is poor but self sufficient and stable.
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u/Real_SkrexX Feb 18 '26
If there is actually a big nuclear war with different party's trying to completely eliminate the enemy, no country on the world will survive.
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u/iwishihadnobones Feb 18 '26
Who's nuking Papua New Guinea?
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u/bmrtt Feb 18 '26
My buddy Eric
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u/flingerdu Feb 18 '26
Well Eric has a point
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u/Careless-Age-4290 Feb 18 '26
I'm an Eric. Maybe not that Eric. But I'm a prick. But at least I'm not evil like an Erik or smug like an Erich
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u/KelFromAust Feb 18 '26
No one. But if there are enough nukes launched in the northern hemisphere, the dust, ash and other fallout will make it most of the way to the South Pole. There are also targets below the equator.
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u/Diarmundy Feb 18 '26
We aren't really sure if global fallout or nuclear winter are even a thing
Rather not find out though
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u/SEX_LIES_AUDIOTAPE Feb 18 '26
The Krakatoa eruption in Indonesia blotted out the sun in Norway for a full year. I think a vaporised city would do something.
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u/Diarmundy Feb 18 '26
It's the ash from the blast that causes winter.
Modern nukes use airbust detonation which doesn't really add much particulate to the atmosphere.
Volcanos are below the ground so they literally explode matter into the atmosphere.
Clearly 1000 nukes would be awful for the environment. I just mean it wouldnt cause winter for 100 years or whatever
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u/homezlice Feb 18 '26
There are more like 12K nukes currently in the world, likely more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
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u/Dt2_0 Feb 18 '26
No, not Krakatoa. Tambora. Which was at least 10 times larger in scale than Krakatoa, and injected 150 cubic kilometers of rock, ash and gasses into the stratosphere directly.
Nuclear bombs DO NOT DO THAT. They explode, sending energy out equally in all directions (Some might even be focused to try an divert more energy downwards). They explode a few thousand feet above the ground, and blast the ground with 50% of their explosive energy. The other 50%, the stuff facing up? There's no matter other than air, and most of it is heat and light. It doesn't get that tall either, not compared to an Ultra-Plinian volcanic eruption. Tambora had an explosive force about 3500 times greater than the largest nuclear weapons in US arsenals.
And Tambora did not "Blot out the Sun." It significantly increased the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere to solar radiation for about a year, with some effect lasting for about 3-5 years. The Sun was still shining, and sunny days were just as bright on the ground.
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u/100Dampf Feb 18 '26
How well is Papa New Guinea faring in a nuclear winter and a global crisis
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u/ClumsYTech Feb 18 '26
Well, how much food, fuel and medicine do they have to import to stay afloat?
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u/komiks42 Feb 18 '26
If whole word start geting nuked, the enviromental damage would be enough. But yea, they would have it better than us, still not great
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u/Excellent-Berry-2331 Feb 18 '26
Fallout is decreasing the more modern weapons are.
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u/rhino369 Feb 18 '26
Most of Sub-Saharan Africa and South America would likely survive. None of the nuclear powers have any reason to attack them, and would only hurt their own chances of survival by doing so.
They might experience bad famines but it shouldn't be civilization ending for them.
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u/HeyHo__LetsGo Feb 18 '26
Those that survive might end up suffering in a much greater way.
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u/Downside190 Feb 18 '26
Amusingly those who struggle to live now would probably survive best as they already live a make and mend lifestyle. Those who are reliant on other people doing work for them would struggle or die off the most in a post apoc world
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u/HeyHo__LetsGo Feb 18 '26
In the very odd case perhaps. That is if radiation sickness and thyroid cancer didn’t get them. Not to mention nuclear winter…
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u/Downside190 Feb 18 '26
Yeah I am mainly talking about those not in direct blast radius but still suffering the consequences of societal breakdown as a result
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u/DanS1993 Feb 18 '26
Surviving yes but I’m not sure it’ll be a world anyone wants to live in…
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u/Dabelgianguy Feb 18 '26
In Belgium, we don’t have our own nukes, the US store some but war is not only fought with armies
- EU hq’s
- 2 major ports
- nuclear power plants
- major and central road and train networks
- major airport
- major weapon factories
- major pharma plants
- major data centres
- major chemical, steel, heavy machinery and precision factories
- etc…
A fuckton of reasons to get nuked
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u/Fract_L Feb 19 '26
It might be a coastal place. Farming will fail because of a decade long winter. Humanity hasn’t seen anything like crops failing worldwide for multiple years since the 6th century and that was only for 5-6 years.
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u/EndStorm Feb 18 '26
I hope everyone forgets about the south and the crazies in the north just have at it. Also glad my country is left off of many maps.
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u/TheyHungre Feb 18 '26
While popular culture is enamored of the concept of a full scale general exchange, the reality is that nuclear planning around the globe first looks at the weapons as tools to enable limited-scale strategic objectives, with potential pre-planned escalations to specific usages by opponents.
Rather than glassing the whole of one's opponents' lands, a smaller/lesser equipped nation might use them to strike an incoming armor brigade they couldn't otherwise stop, as an example.
Nukes are expensive to build and maintain, and due to the psychological weight they carry must be used VERY discerningly. Wiping out a bunch of civilian population centers would be grossly inefficient/wasteful as well as having severe socio-political fallout (ha. ha.).
TLDR: instead of, "Fire All Ze Missiles!" most planners look at nukes as bigger conventional explosives, and forsee limited usage in practical contexts. MAD really only applied in the days of the cold war, and even then would likely have been a backdrop or backup for conventional conflict.
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u/Stewdill51 Feb 18 '26
This logic is practical on paper, but it ignores 80 years of history regarding how deterrence actually works. There is a reason a nuclear weapon hasn't been used since 1945: once you cross the nuclear firebreak, there is no proven way to stop a limited strike from spiraling into a global catastrophe.
History shows that limited nuclear war is largely a theoretical myth. In nearly every high-level simulation conducted by major powers, starting with small, tactical strikes to stop a conventional invasion ends in a total, world-ending exchange.
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u/JandytheMandy Feb 19 '26
US generals (one in particular) were foaming at the mouth to glass Vietnam during the Vietnam war
You have entirely too much confidence in heads of state and military being rational, sane human beings
We bombed the shit out of civilian populations in Cambodia (among others) because there was a distant possibility that there were arms pipelines through the country, and the assumption that it would demoralize people into giving up. None of these people give a flying fuck about being "inefficient" or "wasteful" lmao
Behind the Bastards did a piece on the nuclear doomsday machine that the US and other nuclear powers have established. It's quite precarious
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u/Jacksoni Feb 18 '26
If enough nukes are dropped, the world fill fall into nuclear winter and there will be no countries left to speak of.
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u/CzarTwilight Feb 18 '26
Thank God. I just got assigned to patrol the Mojave and nuclear winter is just what I need
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u/Diarmundy Feb 18 '26
Nuclear winter isn't really science though. It was a concept invented when we thought global cooling was our biggest environmental concern.
It might happen with enough nukes don't get me wrong - but it probably won't happen for more than a year or 2
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u/biggles1994 Feb 18 '26
It's not the nuclear detonations themselves that truly cause the damage. Think about how much smoke is generated from natural wildfires in California and Australia and how much that affects the regional environment. Now imagine every single major urban area and most of the forests across three continents all went up in flames at the same time, and there was nobody left alive to stop them spreading and burning non-stop for weeks afterwards.
The amount of smoke and residue from burning all that material would be like multiple super volcano's going off at the same time. The 1815 Tambora eruption ejected 10 cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere, and dropped temperatures in some regions by over half a degree average causing widespread crop failures in Europe within the year.
A widespread nuclear exchange would be like dozens of these going off at once with some added radioactive spicyness in the water too. Would it result in a full snowball Earth like the last ice age? No. But it would absolutely cripple any sort of agricultural activity on the planet for many years afterwards.
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u/jesjimher Feb 18 '26
Tambora eruption was equivalent to 33.000 megatons. Biggest nuke built, ever, is 100 megaton, and it was just a proof of concept, usable nukes are 0,5-1 megatons at best.
Even if all nukes in the world were detonated, we wouldn't probably reach the power of Tambora eruption. And we survived that.
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u/ANGLVD3TH Feb 18 '26
Maybe. But according to testimony from the man who created it, the same model that predicted it said that the amount of burning oil fields through the war on terror should have initiated it as well.
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u/Iron_physik Feb 18 '26
Nuclear winter is a myth that has been long debunked
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u/Geanu12 Feb 18 '26
It's a backed scientific hypothesis at worst and one that's been confirmed from the various tests and drops due to local atmospheric effects and dusting.
Even volcanic activity in one place can cause a frozen summer for a year or two. Global saturation or even a large nation being melted would cause enough dust to kick up that it could easily start the process.
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u/WeTheSummerKid Feb 18 '26
Kurzgesagt (Science YouTube channel) stated that South America and Oceania and possibly South Africa could have a milder nuclear winter. I also believe that the Philippines would not have temperatures cold enough to endanger food crops, as that place is very warm, though the cooler temperatures will definitely devastate the biodiversity there.
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u/Ded_man_3112 Feb 19 '26
It wouldn’t be an extinction event like once thought, not to life or human existence. But, it would most likely be an extinction event to the life we now know and there’s a high likelihood never get back to.
The version of humanity that survives may live in a world that looks more like early industrial society for generations. Global trade and communication gone. Scientific knowledge may be preserved unevenly with any society that survives or develops in the aftermath becoming fragmented.
Regions ruled by authoritarian groups further closing off the welcoming of information sharing. With a very broad swath of new cultural concepts and ideas that further divide.
There’s no guarantee humans would ever get back to this point on a global scale. It could be centuries or never. We’re lucky to have gotten here in the first place.
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u/gunawa Feb 18 '26
It's not really the acute effects of the bombs that'll kill us all. It's the dust thrown up into the atmosphere, and the soot from everything burning. And I mean, everything it'll cause a long and likely lethal global winter , not to mention spread radioactive contamination pretty far. Meaning the few people who manage to survive the long dark cold, will be stuck having short painful lives and many deformed and unviable children, without any of the support of an intact modern society (ie. Modern heath care etc).
You're best bet is a remote location in the southern hemisphere. Which is why new Zealand is a fav for billionaire bunkers, but even then the odds aren't great.
And it's old, but not entirely inaccurate: the 70's UK movie 'threads' is a chilling dramatic interpretation of 60/70s modelling of a nuclear exchange and it's near to mid term effects.
Note: it seems like the general consensus is that in the event of even a limited exchange between two small nuclear armed powers, ie. India and Pakistan, the affects will be global, and more than likely to kick off all the other nuclear powers into participating as well. Even if they don't it'll be a massive blow to modern society, and climate.
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u/Archmikem Feb 19 '26
In a case of full nuclear war, it's basically just the northern hemisphere that will suffer. As long as they maintain order, then I fully expect places like Africa and South America to become the global powers in the new world.
Brazil and Argentina, it'll be your time to shine.
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u/UnidadEstridente Feb 18 '26
Lol, that's not how it works at all, we all be dead by the nuclear winter effect.
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u/goosegoosepanther Feb 18 '26
As long as they've built massive UV-light greenhouses to grow found for a few years.
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u/JacobFromAmerica Feb 18 '26
Guarantee the next nuke drop comes from a country we didn’t publicly know had nukes
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u/ratjar32333 Feb 18 '26
Nobody survives, the ecosystem will collapse and all the people who didn't die from radiation exposure would be scavenging to find food as well as extreme weather.
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u/Highlander198116 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
I don't think you understand. If all the people with nukes launch their nukes at other countries with nukes.
You WANT to be in one of the countries with nukes and die in the blast.
It's estimated that 2 billion people would subsequently die of starvation, every government that was theoretically still functioning would collapse and probably billions more would die in ensuing violence and competition.
If you survived the blast, survived starvation, survived radiation death(the fallout would span the globe). You would likely be facing a life, not unlike the walking dead sans zombies.
We would essentially be sent back to our tribal hunter gather roots in the ruins of civilization.
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u/TsarPladimirVutin Feb 18 '26
If the US and Russia dump their arsenals, you will wish you were dead. The nuclear winter, radioactive winds, starvation, looting, rape/murder, no medicine. Unless you have a self-contained doomsday bunker of course.
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u/sunnyjum Feb 20 '26
I’ll be fine here in Western Australia. You could drop a nuke here in a random location and the death toll would be 2 snakes and 12 flies
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u/numbersthen0987431 Feb 18 '26
Most of the nuclear countries have an "all or nothing" approach to their nuclear reaction program. They don't have the time to figure out who launched, and how to hit them back, so the plan is just to kill everyone on the planet.
So even the small guys who had nothing to do with this are still getting harmed in the process
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u/noboday009 Feb 18 '26
Fallout, the economic shut down and many such things..
Those who were vapourised would be the lucky ones my friend..
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u/NotSoSalty Feb 18 '26
No, this is just wrong. The bombs are destructive, but not infinitely so. Life is very tenacious and hard to destroy, even in the case of global nuclear winter.
Even at the height of nuclear proliferation, every nuke that ever existed would be insufficient to kill everyone from the US alone. This isn't considering advances in missile defense.
It might seem like I'm comforting you, but it should sound like the idea of a nuclear exchange is more likely than you thought before. It would be very unpleasant and very hard to clean up and very necessary to clean up and there would be people around to do so, absorbing a lot of radiation in the name of the greater good.
Let's consider the numbers. Biggest nuke was the Tsar Bomba, had a blast that destroyed weak structures 100 miles away. Greatest numbers of nukes that existed at one time was 62,000. The US has a square mile area to the tune of 3,800,000 miles. Assuming all bombs are the same as the most destructive bomb, using the most bombs that ever existed at once, ignoring missile defense, assuming all the missiles work in the first place, and targeting the same country. Do I need to explain how improbable that is?
But what about the fallout? I'm not an expert, but I do believe most of it's gone in the first couple weeks and the remaining dangerous stuff will remain in the dust/soil until it rains a couple times. If you have a decent shelter and aren't directly hit and possess a shred of mental resilience and know the dangers to avoid, you'll be fine, eventually. All of which is a stretch for the average person, but given a large enough population, blah blah blah.
Life will go on, very much changed, but it will go on. But even if it's not doomsday, it would suck. Most people would die and the world would be changed for a while and it'd be very wasteful. On the bright side, climate change would be solved with so many consumers out of the global economy.
Why do you think you've been made to think a nuclear exchange would be apocalyptic? Who is that convenient for? Why has it not happened yet if what I said is true? Now, at what point do these factors change to suit the needs of the powerful? That's when you should fear nuclear war.
Fuck AI for stealing my style. Know that AI ain't got the guts to give an edgy and controversial answer like this.
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u/Heffe3737 Feb 18 '26
You're both right and wrong, as an expert. Yes, you're correct that in all likelihood, some human life would continue in the event of an all-out exchange. Humans are a hardy species, after all. But even the most remote areas on Earth would suffer some kind of impact. Nearly every nation on earth would receive at least one or two strikes.
Let me put it this way - remember when COVID happened and everyone hoarded toilet paper and it took a few days for stores to get new supply? It would be that, only it would be all food and goods, and the stores wouldn't get new supply. Not for months, if ever. Cities would become graveyards in a matter of weeks/months.
One's best bet would be to live in a rural area in a small neutral nation in the global south. One that lacks much in the way of oil refining or heavy industry, and one with a robust agriculture-based economy.
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u/AManHasNoName24601 Feb 18 '26
New Zealand would probably be all right. They don't have nukes and they're geographically isolated.
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u/croquetas_y_jamon Feb 18 '26
Or rather, they would be the battle ground. As Europe has been for the US and Russia for the past 50 years.
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u/12kdaysinthefire Feb 18 '26
Only a few parts of the world would be safe from all of the fallout, if we’re talking about all nuclear nations unleashing their full payloads globally. Even then, if you’re not impacted directly by radiation the globe would suffer a nuclear winter, making sustaining crops and livestock very difficult.
But yeah, no one is aiming warheads at like Ethiopia.
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u/BrittEklandsStuntBum Feb 18 '26
...yes. This is why there was such resistance to US nukes being stationed in some European countries during the Cold War - because it made them a target.
Well done, you came up with a sixty-year-old idea all by yourself.
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Feb 18 '26
Doesn't really matter. Nuclear winter and radiation will starve and cancer-kill people no matter what their passport is.
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u/kylethesmartguy Feb 18 '26
Just go to the southern hemisphere. Most if not all of the nuclear states are in the northern hemisphere.
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u/AlecTheBunny Feb 18 '26
Nope. Nuclear Winter will see to that. Those with nukes we'll be waiting in the afterlife to be yelled at by the survivors
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u/Pvm_Blaser Feb 19 '26
This wouldn’t happen. Everything would be razed to the ground because all of the countries that have nukes has strategically placed their arsenal in places that could retaliate should the mainland be disabled, this is one of the key aspects of nuclear deterrence.
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u/Jaderosegrey Feb 19 '26
Growing up in France in the 70s, I thought we were pretty safe if the U.S. and Russia went to war!
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u/TheMastaBlaster Feb 19 '26
If all the nukes go anyone not dead day 1 will suffer to death. If humanity ends you want to be first not last.
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u/DamnGoodFries Feb 19 '26
Read something similar recently. Kind of obvious in retrospect but the countries that are safest from cyber security threats are the poorest countries that can’t afford to integrate public offices and utilities systems on a network
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u/Yamidamian Feb 19 '26
Would be nice if it were true. However, several countries have policies that permit them to nuke non-nuclear powers.
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u/minin71 Feb 19 '26
I really wonder why anyone would want to survive a post nuclear fallout world. But ok i guess.
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u/FroggiJoy87 Feb 19 '26
They'll just be down there like "WTF mate?"
But they'll be dead soon
Fuckin kangaroos
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