Why do so many people unironically believe a nuclear war could destroy all of mankind?

radiation is a meme?

Enough to cause a """"nuclear winter"""" is.

The whole idea of nuclear winter isn't that the bombs itself cause it, but the global firestorms caused by the bombs would produce enough ash and soot that it would produce global cooling.

I know there are a couple reputable studies with estimations, but I haven't been assed to read them.

Current missile-launched strat-nukes are generally 10-20 times more powerful (100-500 kT) than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (15 and 22 kT). As they get bigger, they get more energy-for-material efficient (the fuel burns up more completely), but less effect-for-energy efficient (you pay for volume of effect, but only area of effect benefits you, so there's a square-cube law in play). This is the sweet spot.

Little Boy and Fat Man were each about 4 1/2 tons, whereas modern strategic nukes are each a couple hundred pounds. People worry about "suitcase nukes" when they should be worrying about handtruck nukes.

Old bomber-carried strat-nukes were larger and more powerful, in the 1-10 MT range. Tsar Bomba, in an actual weaponized form, would have been about two-hundred times more powerful than a typical strat-nuke, but it was silly and impractical, since it also would have weighed and cost about two-hundred times as much. Most of its energy just went into heating a very tall column of air and radiating into space. The same practical effects on the ground could be achieved with a much cheaper, lighter, and easier to deliver salvo of small nukes.

Specific examples here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield

>Why couldn't it?
Because an average earthquake has more energy than all of the nukes of mankind combined

>Millions of acres of forest would go up from the missiles that either miss, or from trying to hit the enemy's silos.
See, even you have to admit that nukes aren't strong enough to kill of mankind, its some side-effect chain reaction bullshit that is supposed to finish us off

> Because an average earthquake has more energy than all of the nukes of mankind combined
The average earthquake also occurs deep underground.

Major volcano erruptions are also more powerful than all nukes combined.

Probably because we have enough nuclear weapons to make the Earth an inhospitable place for human life.

You've got any idea how many fucking nukes would be necessary for such a thing?

A limited nuclear skirmish between, say, India and Pakistan would kill millions and leave hundreds of millions more fighting for survival, instantaneously creating the worst humanitarian crisis ever by several orders of magnitude. It would also throw up enough ash and black smoke to reduce global temperatures by 2-4 degrees C, which in turn would absolutely fuck global weather patterns and shift, weaken or outright stop important weather cycles such as the asian monsoon. The effects would take around five years to peak and would potentially last more than a decade after that - the wave of droughts and famines would leave billions thirsty and starving. Resource wars would break out across the entirety of Africa and Asia, spilling millions of refugees into Europe. The economies of Europe and America would also collapse because of how much they rely on the third world for manual labour.

A full blown slugging match between the US and Russia would blacken the skies and reduce global temperatures by 20 degrees C for up to fifty years, likely wiping out all complex life on Earth.

It could. It really could.

An all out war would fuck humanity big time, maybe not eradicate it but civilization would be RIP.

Real nuclear war is fucking scary, but not for the reasons people meme.

Maybe 10% of the global stockpile?

And they also occur in one location. Nuclear war would almost certainly occur on multiple continents, since the two major nuclear powers are on different continents.

What would happen if you could no longer maintain nuclear power plants ?

For example a bomb or virus kills/makes the area uninhabitable.

Are the stations able to shut themselves down safely ?

t.brainlet

How? Seriously, how? Even if you got total control over where every single one goes, you're not going go to kill everyone, the world is HUGE and billions of people globally don't live in cities, they live scattered in tiny villages across vast areas of sparse settlement.

>anything i haven't taken the time to understand is a meme

>depleted uranium rounds
>nuclear war
wew lad

fellas i understand you're shilling hard for trump's nuclear war in asia but please try to understand that "it won't destroy ALL of mankind" is not a comforting thought for those of us who live in the blast radius

...

Because it can? I dunno, how is this a hard thing to understand. We have far far far far more nukes than we need to turn every square millimeter on Earth to ash.

We also have enough sarin gas to murder every man woman and child on Earth 7 times and enough weaponized anthrax to do the same so nukes aren't our only option at ending everything.

Plus tons of shit we've never heard of I'm sure from super viruses in the government's control to weapons of mass destruction we can barely dream of.

The biggest thing I hate about conspiratards are that they ignore the real dangers for boogie man fanwank

DU munitions are like little baby nuclear bombs wrapped in shell casings and given as presents to heretics in the sand peoples lands today. Bill Clinton was the first president to open fire with them in Kosovo. It's one way to get rid of nuclear waste, you just declare war on the country where you want to dump it.

>We have far far far far more nukes than we need to turn every square millimeter on Earth to ash.
Exaggerating does not help.

>thinking it's an exaggeration

20 seconds on google

sipri.org/research/armaments-and-disarmament/nuclear-weapons/world-nuclear-forces/the-united-states

Since that last site seems a bit too bleeding heart liberal

military.wikia.com/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

>you unironically believe this

>DU minitions are like little baby nuclear bombs
Sounds like it'd make really lousy vehicle armor for our M1A1 tanks...

what does DU have to do with nuclear weapons? what is a micronuke? something from your animes? are you 12 or just a retard? so many interesting questions raised

i honestly can't tell if you are trolling or just a hyper-autistic trump supporter. 6/10

> You've got any idea how many fucking nukes would be necessary for such a thing?
In 1883, Krakatoa's eruption produced a 1 Kelvin global cooling effect for 1-2 years. One eruption. Now multiply that by 100s of cities being hit with tens of thousands of weapons worldwide.

The billions not touched by nuclear blasts would have to figure out how to survive with a 99% reduction in sunlight due to stabilized soot clouds.

Worst case scenario, all practical food production would cease for 1-2 years. Best case scenario, winter crops could still be planted, but would have to be grown without pesticides, herbicides, petroleum-based fertilizer or gasoline for farming machinery, and very little surviving livestock.

And that's not even guessing about the global radiation levels. Since Cesium and Radium tend to concentrate in milk, we cannot even say that any mammalian species will survive.

We could literally be handing the planet to the cockroaches.

But anyway, have fun storming the castle! I live about 20 miles from a first strike zone. I won't be alive to see it.

>One eruption.
Yeah, one 200 MT eruption set off below the surface to kick huge amounts of volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere beyond the reach of the rain clouds that normally remove particulates from the air.

>Now multiply that by 100s of cities being hit with tens of thousands of weapons worldwide.
The actual deployed global strategic arsenal consists of about 5000 warheads, with highly redundant targetting (i.e. most of them would hit places that are already glass parking lots) and a total combined power of around 1000-2000 MT (about five or ten Krakatoas). Most of them are set for airburst (so the radiation, particularly thermal, shines down over a wide area rather than being over the horizon or blocked by buildings and hills), and therefore won't throw much ground-level material into the upper atmosphere.

The "nuclear winter" effect would likely be smaller than one major volcanic eruption. In any case, it won't be like hundreds of them.

>It would also throw up enough ash and black smoke to reduce global temperatures by 2-4 degrees C
Sounds like a smooth way to deal with global warming

like, if theres a few thousand people left farming radioactive dirt and fighting over gasoline, thats close enough

nuclear war could burn off the ionosphere.

In which case all life on the surface of earth would cease to exist. Sure you could live underground, but the sun would become deadly to all life so there'd be no plants. No plants means no oxygen. Those humans left underground would be left counting the days till the planet ran out of breathable oxygen.

Because it kind of, maybe, could've happen if the cold got real

>No plants means no oxygen. Those humans left underground would be left counting the days till the planet ran out of breathable oxygen.
Now here's some stupid crap. First of all, the atmosphere is over 20% oxygen. That means there's a thousand trillion tonnes of oxygen. That's a long-term supply even for a whole planet full of life (which currently uses and refreshes only about one 4500th of the atmospheric reservoir per year).

Secondly, how is anything going to hang around using up oxygen without eating food? How is food going to be produced without making oxygen?

Food production is the only problem, and the real effects of nuclear war won't eliminate surface food production for long enough to be a human extinction threat.

>nuclear war could burn off the ionosphere.
Even if this were true (and it isn't), the ionosphere isn't what protects us here at the surface from space radiation. Rather, our thick atmosphere (equivalent to several meters of water) does that.

The world super powers likely have many more and much more powerful warheads than what they lead the public to believe.

just saying

>The world super powers likely have many more and much more powerful warheads than what they lead the public to believe.
Why do you believe this? What do you think they'd do with all of these extra warheads? Why would they want more powerful ones? Why would they want secret ones, when everybody just wants them for deterrence? If anything, they'd exaggerate their stock of these costly weapon systems (I'm suspicious that most of Russia's claimed arsenal wouldn't be observed in good working order if the big day ever came).

For instance, America has about 2000 deployed strat-nukes, each of which can fuck up a big city pretty decisively, and in less than an hour after the order was given to launch it. What more do they need? Who isn't going to be deterred by that? That's enough to fuck up any combination of countries that makes trouble.

Anyway, there's only one global superpower now.

People have no sense of scale.
>Earth big
>nuke big
>they must be similarly big

The iceland volcano or w/e blocked sun and shut airtraffic over western europe for a week. That was 0.5Tg of black carbon.

Mount St Hellen put a shadow over the western half of usa for over a month. That was 10 Tg of blackcarbon.

Estimates of a crop destroying nuclear winter start at 80-100Tg of BC. Growing seasons in american breadbasket and rus/ Ukraine limited to july-august. Alot of starvation fot sure when combined with destruction of urban /population centers.

You're a fucking retard, as are all others claiming that Nuclear winter isn't real or won't have ramifications.

There is evidence to back this up. Look at volcanic eruptions that produce stratospheric ash. Pinatubo is a prime recent example of a volcanic eruption that induced a global cooling effect of 0.5°C from 1991 to 1993.

That might not seem like a large amount of temperature change, but it's enough to damage agricultural yields worldwide. Combine that with a world in chaos with world trade coming to a halt and other severe economic ramifications and you have a situation in which chaos erupts globally, as governments that survived the nuclear hellfire become unstable, and many that rely on imports from the countries that were effected devolve into civil wars and strife.

The nuclear winter scenario in a large, worldwide nuclear exchange would likely be far worse than Pinatubo or Krakatoa's global cooling effects.

Nuclear winter won't last that long, probably a 1+ years until most of the material dissipates from the stratosphere, but it would have severe consequences on agriculture, especially in a world that is massively destabilized from the exchanges.

Depleted uranium munitions are manufactured from spent fuel rods, used primarily for their mass but on impact they disintegrate and radioactive dust can be inhaled by the enemy combatants or even allied troops who move in soon after causing lung cancer or other maladies. They are nuclear weapons no sense white washing it.

Mini or micro nukes have been around for a long time, just implies very small yields compared to classical nuclear weapons. Down to 10Kt or whatever, some suspect they were used to dismantle the WTC towers 1 and 2, and they may have been used in the middle east theater already.

Anyway, nuclear war is always on the table and can be scaled down, it doesn't have to be MAD, a limited exchange of conventional nukes I think is inevitable sometime in the 21st century and won't be a big deal after the dust settles. If I was a betting man, US will nuke a problem country or Pakistan will nuke India and India will retaliate. Israel might go all nuclear war as well someday.

Reminder: >The actual deployed global strategic arsenal consists of about 5000 warheads, with highly redundant targetting (i.e. most of them would hit places that are already glass parking lots) and a total combined power of around 1000-2000 MT (about five or ten Krakatoas). Most of them are set for airburst (so the radiation, particularly thermal, shines down over a wide area rather than being over the horizon or blocked by buildings and hills), and therefore won't throw much ground-level material into the upper atmosphere.

A severe nuclear winter just isn't consistent with modern strategic arsenals.

>Depleted uranium munitions are manufactured from spent fuel rods
God damn, how do you misunderstand something this badly?

Depleted uranium munitions are manufactured from the waste of enrichment plants, which don't involve nuclear reactions at all. They extract about half of the U-235, and then extracting more is getting expensive, so the rest of the uranium is considered waste. This is not at all comparable to nuclear reactor waste, which is full of nasty radioisotopes.

It's less radioactive than natural uranium, which is ubiquitous in soil at ppm levels (so we're always being exposed to it), and (when reasonably fresh) much less radioactive than the combination of natural uranium with its accumulated decay products (like radium and radon).

Heavy-metal toxicity is a more serious health concern for depleted uranium than radioactivity is, and that's not as bad as lead.

>some suspect they were used to dismantle the WTC towers 1 and 2
Yeah, that's about the level of kookiness you're on.

You still don't get it. It's not about the bomb physically lifting dirt into the air. It's about massive fires, which would result from an airburst just as well

>It's about massive fires
When we have a big forest fire, there's a haze while it's burning and for a few days afterward. Maybe a couple of weeks. Then it's gone. It doesn't hang around for a year.

Particulates generated at ground level don't generally have a way to get up into the stratosphere where clouds don't form, so water attaches to them and pulls them down in the rain or snow.

Volcanos are different. They erupt violently and throw material upward at high speed. Or they keep a big plume of very hot gas flowing upward for an extended period of time to carry ash to high altitudes.

Back in the 90s, the nuclear winter kooks were saying that the Gulf War was going to cause a global or at least regional weather catastrophe because of all the burning oil wells in Kuwait. Nothing came of it.

Do you know how large of a 'forest fire' a nuclear war would create you raging retard?

Yeah that's an interesting wiki article but are you denying they are not nuclear weapons?
>While the term 'Depleted' implies it isn't particularly dangerous, DU is a chemically toxic, radioactive, heavy metal [1] and as such is potentially hazardous to human health. It is widely believed that exposure to Depleted Uranium, especially when ingested or inhaled as a particulate, causes severe long term health effects in humans. The size of the effect and the political significance of it, however, are in dispute. DU is an extremely dense material. (1.7 times as dense as lead) It is also pyrophoric and as such combustible when in contact with air.
I have no problem with whoever is using them, war is hell, and sure the primary trait is not radioactivity, more the self sharpening and combustible nature, spraying some radioactive dust around is just a bonus.

>kookiness
It was some Russian nuclear engineer who proposed the theory, actually he didn't even directly suggest WTC towers were removed with nukes but sighted the plausibility of large towers too big for classical demolition or dismantlement being demolished with small nukes buried in the ground underneath. Interesting to note that since the above ground nuclear test ban all tests are carried out underground so every country with nuke bombs is now an expert in subterranean detonation.

Setting aside that real forest fires get pretty fucking ridiculously big and have been happening all over the world since prehistoric times, it's not about the size of the fire, or the amount of particulates released into the atmosphere, it's about the altitude they get to.

Ash from ordinary fires gets washed out of the air quickly. It simply doesn't matter how much there is. It's all coming out of the air within a couple of weeks.

>Yeah that's an interesting wiki article but are you denying they are not nuclear weapons?
I didn't link a "wiki article" and ugh...
>are you denying they are not
Idiots like you are painful to converse with.

>DU is a chemically toxic, radioactive, heavy metal
Lead is a chemically toxic heavy metal, and potassium (an essential nutrient) is radioactive. Depleted uranium isn't radioactive or toxic enough for either property to be useful in a weapon.

No, depleted uranium bullets are not "nuclear weapons" you absolute chimp.

>Depleted uranium munitions are manufactured from spent fuel rods
lol

ITT: People shilling for nuclear war - because it won't kill everyone.

We are all chimps, get over the double negative, you knew what I meant no how. I don't understand your own chimpout ITT.

If it looks, smells and tastes like nuclear war, it might be nuclear war. Maybe it isn't the thousands of tons of DU being spent, maybe it's the micronukes? There are many articles and reports on radiation poisoning, from Bosnia - Kosovo to Iraq and the Afghan. It's a simple matter of documenting it and measuring the contamination but of course the first causality of war is the truth. Are you saying all those reports are hyperbole? go ahead, read a few...

Anons chimpout is caused mostly by your bad arguments and failure to see that they are bad.

Depleted uranium is not a nuclear weapon. I've never heard of such a thing as "micronukes" and I get a really conspiratorial vibe about it. Not that I think they don't exist. See pic.