Fifty years after a nuclear war.

[TinFoilHat]

Assume that the world's superpowers engage in a full out war with today's existing arsenals of nuclear weapons. Civilization destroyed, billions dead, and all that.

Fifty years later, what does the world look like? In countries not directly involved in the war, will fallout and secondary contamination be significant enough to cause mass illness and/or death? In countries directly targeted (such as the USA), is it plausible that anyone could survive the initial war and immediate aftermath, and rebuild any semblance of civilization? How dangerous and widespread will surface radioactivity be after that time, and will water sources be safe to drink? Will it be safe and possible to farm or fish downwind of areas targeted by nuclear devices? Is it likely that the governments of countries involved in a nuclear exchange would survive in any meaningful fashion?

I recall it being said that air-burst nuclear explosions don't create much long-lasting fallout, but in a full nuclear exchange there would be quite a few ground bursts, right? How long will those areas remain dangerous?

[numbskull]

You'd be alright with your choice of headgear.

[Drakheim]

Assume that the world's superpowers engage in a full out war with today's existing arsenals of nuclear weapons. Civilization destroyed, billions dead, and all that.

Fifty years later, what does the world look like?

Depends on where you are.

In countries not directly involved in the war, will fallout and secondary contamination be significant enough to cause mass illness and/or death?

ALL countries would be involved. In the event of a full-scale launch, the Earth's land mass would pretty much all be bathed in nuclear fire. For those areas that were fortunate enough to not be hit by lack of military interest or failed booms, it would just barely start to recover from the nuclear winter.

In countries directly targeted (such as the USA), is it plausible that anyone could survive the initial war

Yes.

and immediate aftermath?

Yes again.

and rebuild any semblance of civilization?

Given enough time for radiation clean up, yes. It would be nothing like it is today though.

How dangerous and widespread will surface radioactivity be after that time, and will water sources be safe to drink?

Given time, water would be safe again. Water is a key player in radiation clean up today. There are extra chemicals and stuff they use as well, but water is still a good clean up tool. The only part you have to worry about is the ground radiation that would, of course, leak into the water supply.

Will it be safe and possible to farm or fish downwind of areas targeted by nuclear devices?

Again, given time yes.

Is it likely that the governments of countries involved in a nuclear exchange would survive in any meaningful fashion?

Some elements of them would survive, but they would emerge with about as much power as a 3rd world African nation. Their military would be destroyed and their money worthless.

I recall it being said that airburst nuclear explosions don't create much long-lasting fallout, but in a full nuclear exchange there would be quite a few ground bursts, right? How long will those areas remain dangerous?

Chernobyl is a good example of ground burst effects. Even though only 5% of the core was released, the effects were still devastating. To this day you cannot go within 1000 feet of the reactor that exploded without shielding or protective suits for an extended period of time. The expected "natural" time frame for the radiation to dissipate is 900 years at Chernobyl. Now take 5% of a nuclear core and multiply the effects of having enriched nuclear fuel (core matieral is MUCH less dangerous than enriched material) in a war head bursting on the ground. I would guess a few thousand years for natural clean up to occour.

===============================================

A study I read on the most likely result of a full-scale war suggested that the immediate casualties would be around 4 billion dead within 2 months, and 500,000,000 to 650,000,000 dead within 5 years.

Not much to work with in terms of re-building the human race so I'mma hold to my unrealistic belief that a war of that magnitude will never happen.

[iFire]

Fifty years later, what does the world look like?

What world?

Seriously though, if all the Nuclear powers waged war, we would be, uh, screwed... to say the least.


--iFire

[freddo]

Combat is reduced to standing around, waiting for your turn to shoot.

[Brady Yoon]

I'm not an expert on nuclear physics, so my answers are probably a little off. :P

Fifty years later, what does the world look like?

The world will hardly be any better than it was at the nuclear war. Natural resources will still be contaminated, there will be fallout all over the place, and finding uncontaminated drinking water will be difficult.

In countries not directly involved in the war, will fallout and secondary contamination be significant enough to cause mass illness and/or death?

Yes, if two countries become engaged in nuclear war, the whole world is endangered.

In countries directly targeted (such as the USA), is it plausible that anyone could survive the initial war

Yes, but I wouldn't try it.

and immediate aftermath?

Much more difficult, as there would be radiation sickness all over the place.

and rebuild any semblance of civilization?

It would take a long time, perhaps 50-100 years.

How dangerous and widespread will surface radioactivity be after that time, and will water sources be safe to drink?

I'm not quite sure on this one, but water shortages will defeinitely be a problem.

Will it be safe and possible to farm or fish downwind of areas targeted by nuclear devices?

Probably not. Even right now, there are warnings that say some fish are contaminated with mercury. Imagine how much worse things would be after full scale nuclear war!

Is it likely that the governments of countries involved in a nuclear exchange would survive in any meaningful fashion?

Not likely. If they were stupid enough to engage in nuclear war, they shouldn't be in power anyway.

I recall it being said that airburst nuclear explosions don't create much long-lasting fallout, but in a full nuclear exchange there would be quite a few ground bursts, right? How long will those areas remain dangerous?

I'm not sure, sorry.

The point is, nuclear war is stupid. There are absolutely no advantages in killing each other off. If the human race is ever foolish enough to even think about nuclear war, we're better off going extinct. At least we'll be doing the animals and plants of Earth a chance. The only thing worse that could happen is a 50 km asteroid striking Earth.

[iFire]

Its not gunna be some asteroid or epidemic or alien invasion or a woo-woo king of earth that kills off the human race... its gunna be us (the human race). *Predicts a more powerful weapon than a nuke-type-thing*

Just thougt I'd put that up... *shrugs*

[Iain Lambert]

Personally, I plan to get a Jenson Interceptor, and drive around Australia defending people in exchange for fuel. Works for Mel Gibson.

[Maha Vailo]

*Predicts a more powerful weapon than a nuke-type-thing*

You'd better hope we don't come up with antimatter bombs. Yeowch!

- Maha "SDI ain't gonna stop that one" Vailo

[Drakheim]

*Predicts a more powerful weapon than a nuke-type-thing*

You'd better hope we don't come up with antimatter bombs. Yeowch!

- Maha "SDI ain't gonna stop that one" Vailo

The science for the already exists. The only thing stopping their production is that a 10MT Fusion bomb (several thousand exist) is equal to 290gallons of anti-matter. At the current understanding / technology we have on how to produce anti-matter, it would take all of the production energy on earth around 2 million years to make that much.

So we are safe... for the next few years at least. (When some nutcase in some country figures out how to make anti-matter more easily.)

[Stuart]

Assume that the world's superpowers engage in a full out war with today's existing arsenals of nuclear weapons. Civilization destroyed, billions dead, and all that. Fifty years later., what does the world look like?

One thing we have to make clear before we start. We're talking about the biggest cataclysm in human history. When we say things like "doing well" or "doing badly", those terms are relative.

Any country can be divided into two parts. The "A-country" is the big cities, the industrial and population centers and the resource concentration they represent. Big cities got to be that way because they are in desirable locations, near good ports, river crossings or mountain passes. When the city goes, so does the locations. The "B-country" is everything else. In effect the A-country represents big vulnerable collections of assets gathered into single spots. The B-country represents dispersed ranges of resources spread over large areas. This is a very important distinction. The relative value of the A-country and the B-country depends on the country and society involved. However one thing is constant, the support and supplies that the A-country needs to survive comes from the B-country. Given time, the B-country will rebuild the A-country. The survival of the B-country is, therefore, critical while the survival of the A-country might not be. Now, the primary asset of the B-country is its population; they are the ones who will generate resources from the B-country and turn them into product. So, the critical thing for a post nuclear environment is population. Save as much of that as we can and we're a jump ahead. That sounds eminently humanitarian. In reality it has awful consequences but we'll come to those later.

The extent to which the A-country can be rebuilt and the speed with which that can be achieved depends on the damage inflicted on the cities. Its generally assumed that the cities will be totally destroyed write-offs but, in reality, the situation is by no means so simple.

There's a few things that are important here. One is that big devices are a rarity. There are no 100 megaton devices, very few 25 and 10 megaton devices and not all that many 5 megaton weapons. The largest devices in widespread use are 1 megaton weapons and the majority of strategic weapons are in the 350 -150 kiloton bracket. 50 kiloton strategic weapons are quite common. The reason is quite simple. The destructive power of an explosion is distributed in three dimensions (actually four since the time component is very important) so the destructive power of a device is directly proportion to the cube root of its explosive power. Even worse, the destructive effects of a device are like many other distance related phenomena; they obey the inverse square law. Double the distance from the blast center and the effects are reduced by a factor of four. Therefore, a 1 megaton device is not 1,000 times as destructive as a 10 kiloton device, its ten times as such and those effects attenuate rapidly with distance. However, very big devices are MUCH heavier than small ones and consume disproportionate amounts of fissile material. Put all this together and its much more productive to have a large number of small devices than a small number of large ones.

Another is how the devices are used. The radius of destruction of nuclear devices is actually quite limited; this is a natural outgrowth of working on the inverse square law. Even with one of the "big" 1 megaton weapons, its fury is largely spent by the time the blast wave has reached ten miles from center. The smaller devices have lesser radii although the workings of the cube power rule mean that those radii are not as small as the difference in explosive power suggests. Nevertheless, the relatively limited effect of the devices shows that the general civilian presumption that ground zero for a nuclear strike on a city will be the city center is likely to be wrong. The devices will be targeted onto specific parts of the city that are judged to be of especial value. These may actually be in the suburbs or other peripheral areas.

So how does a nuclear device destroy things? The primary effects that result from the initiation of a device are (in no particular order) a light flash, a heat flash a blast concussion wave and a sleet of direct radiation. In fact, of these the last is of relatively little significance. The range of the radiation is very short and is further attenuated by the inverse square law. Its only significant within the areas where blast and heat are already lethal. If thermal blast and concussion have already reduced you to the size, shape and color of a McDonalds hamburger, irradiating you as well is incredibly superfluous. Thus the direct effects we are interested in are light, heat and blast and they do arrive in that order. The further an observer is from the point of initiation, the greater the gap between them. This is very important. The flash of light that will blind a victim close in serves to warn a potential victim further out. Once a few miles out from ground zero, the light flash tells the population that a device has gone off and its shadows show them sheltered areas from the next effects to arrive. If an area is shadowed from light, its shadowed from radiant heat as well. The heat flash is the first really destructive effect to hit. This is direct radiated thermal energy; like light it travels in straight lines. It will set anything inflammable on fire to a considerable distance from ground zero. Interestingly, it won't set non-flammable things on fire and, for example, must enter a house via windows etc before setting that house on fire. If the windows are masked (for example painted white), the heat flash is unlikely to set a brick-built house on fire (US-style frame houses are a different matter which is why it makes me uneasy living in one).

Last to arrive is blast. Unlike light and heat, both of which travel in straight lines, blast can be funneled by structures, deflected and masked. The windows we carefully painted white are history; smashed by the blast wave and its associated wave front of debris but they've done their job. The heat flash has gone. Houses are actually quite well designed to resist pressure from outside - its pressure from inside that gives them problems. Again, if you can keep the blast out you've got a good chance. Impossible close in to ground zero but progressively easier as we get further from that point. Closing the shutters on windows inside the house is good; even taping the glass in a lattice pattern is astonishingly helpful. Compared with military targets, civilian structures have relatively low damage resistance. In the language this is called protection factor (PF) - most civilians can, with a few minutes warning give themselves a PF of around 40 - meaning they are 40 times more likely to survive than an unprotected civilian. In other words, even though the structures surrounding them are soft and weak, there is a lot they can do that will greatly increase their chance of survival. Note that - even when the sirens are going off, there is still a lot you can do that greatly increases your chances of surviving - provided you have a chance of surviving in the first place.

For all intents and purposes, the effects of initation are generated in the center of the device initiation and travel outwards evenly in all dimensions to produce a perfectly symmetrical sphere or fireball. Now think of the geometry of this. If the device is initiated at ground level, a so-called ground burst, half of all that energy will go into the ground, scouring out a crater but effectively being wasted. More goes skywards. Some will be reflected down towards the earth but very little; effectively that energy too is wasted. The only energy that is actually useful is that produced in a narrow segment around the equator of the spherical ball produced by the initiation. Thus, for this type of attack ground bursts seem very inefficient. They are.

So what do we do about it? Again, think of the geometry. If we lift the detonation point into the air, the segment of the sphere that will spend its energy destroying valuable things is increased and the amount that scours out a crater gets smaller. Keep thinking along these lines and we reach a point where the sphere of the fireball doesn't quite touch the ground at all. In this case almost all the energy from the lower half of the fireball destroys valuable things and none goes to digging a crater. This is called a low airburst and it remains a low airburst as long as the altitude of the point of initiation of the device is less than the diameter of the fireball. If the point of initiation of the device is at an altitude greater than the diameter of the fireball it's a high airburst. If the intention is to knock down cities, low airbursts are the most effective way of doing it.

We haven't mentioned fall-out. The dreaded stuff that destroys humanity. Well, there's a reason for that; the device has only just been initiated, there isn't any fall-out yet. Fall out is caused (mostly) by debris from the ground being sucked into the fireball, irradiated and spewed out of the top. This radioactive plume coalesces in the atmosphere and falls back to earth. It's a mix of isotopes of varying half lives. The most vicious of these isotopes have short half lives and are gone in a few hours. The milder ones can hang around for millennia. Now the blast and heat throw debris outwards, where does the debris sucked into the fireball come from? Answer is the crater scoured in the ground by the energy from the device that went into said ground. But hang on, we've just discovered the best way to knock a city down is to use an airburst that doesn't crater the ground. Doesn't that mean no fallout? That's right, airbursts are relatively clean from a fallout point of view. They do generate some fallout from atmospheric dust and water vapor and a bit more (some very nasty) comes from the debris of the device but not as much as legend holds.

All this means that dropping a nuclear device on a city doesn't necessarily destroy it. In fact, an acquaintance of mine, Peter Laurie, used to start off his lecture on such things by suggesting that 1 megaton device dropped on London would do only trivial damage to the city. After the lynch mob had been brought under control, he'd put a pie cutter on a demographic map of London and prove the point. That device would leave approximately 80 percent of the population and a stunning 95 percent of its assets undestroyed. To be fair, that includes people and property slightly damaged but repairable. The catch is that London wouldn't have been hit by one but by several (in fact four 350 kiloton and two 1 megaton weapons in one particular attack plan). This would still leave a substantial proportion of the population and a larger proportion of their assets intact. The implication of all this is that despite being subject to concentrated attack, the A-country isn't totally destroyed (although its society is) and remains a storehouse of people and good.

So what's been going on in the B-country. One attack pattern is to hit the nuclear weapons stationed out there. These are mostly silo-based missiles. The only way to destroy those is to explode a device directly on top of the silo and scour out of the ground. In other words, a ground burst. And they create fallout. This means that a counter-force strike is inherently much more dangerous to the survival of the population than a counter city strike. Weird isn't it. Attacking the population gives them a reasonable chance of survival while restricting the target plan to military targets radically decreases that chance of survival. It's a point we've seen happening over and over again - when dealing with nuclear weapons we often end up going places we never thought we would. The B-country also gets hit by counter-city strikes but the dispersed nature of the population reduces their direct effects.

OK so its over. The devices have ceased to arrive and eventually, probably after some 36 to 48 hours the all clear sounds. What happens now? From now on we're looking specifically at the USA.

We have to get the B-country working again. The cities are not places to live. Without their support infrastructure, they will become plague pits and charnel houses. They have to be evacuated and the people distributed in the B-country to make up for losses there. In the B-country people are ambling around with Geiger counters plotting what's hot and what isn't. At this point life gets grim. We triage the population. One triage is condition. Who cannot be saved, who can only be saved with massive (and probably impractical) effort, who can be saved with the means available and who will recover without treatment. On top of this is another triage. The population is prioritized according to need for protection. Pregnant women and children are top, young women of childbearing age second. Young men third, older men fourth, old women bottom. This is ruthless and brutal but its essential for survival. Given a choice between saving a young woman who can bear children and an old woman who cannot, we save the potential mother. We do the same with food. Food and water are checked for radioactivity. The clean food goes to the children and young women, the more contaminated food to the lower priority groups. That old woman? She gets the self-frying french-fries.

In this situation the US has a terrific advantage over the rest of the world. Its called the Second Amendment. The B-country population is largely armed, sometimes quite heavily. They do exactly what Founding Fathers envisaged - provide a body of armed people whom the local authority can assemble to maintain order. (The Supreme Court may argue that interpretation of the Second Amendment but by now they are doing so with the people who wrote it). In a more general sense, post-holocaust fiction usually has gangs of outlaws preying on the defenseless citizenry. Interestingly that doesn't seem to happen. In disasters people tend to work together rather than against eachother (for example in US urban disasters Hells Angels biker gangs have made sterling contributions to relief efforts using their bikes and riding skills to get emergency supplies through to places others can't). While lawlessness and disorder do occur, the ease of forming a civilian militia (using the term properly here meaning something very much like the Sheriff's Posse beloved of Westerns) brings that situation under control. Other countries are unlikely to be so fortunate.

So we're in a race. Can we rebuild the B-country so that its firstly self-sustaining without the services provided by the A-country while the stockpile of pre-attack assets survive. Can we reconstruct a working society fast enough so that we can feed enough people to keep going? Can the surviving women bear enough children (and survive doing so) to replace the death toll. For the loss won't stop with the attack. Diseases we consider trivial today, measles, chickenpox, influenza, will be mass killers. No medical treatment. Unless your lucky enough to be where some medical facilities have survived, a broken leg that gets infected is likely to be a death sentence. Its possible to look on this world as a 17th century US colonial environment and there's a lot of truth in that. The downside is that the colonial pioneers didn't have the decaying charnel houses of the cities to worry about.

Winning that race is vital. Lose and we're extinct. The population drops like a stone as disease, radiation and injury take their toll. Then, it should bottom out and start to recover. Teams of older men and infertile women go to the cities to recover what they can. The radiation levels continue to drop. Fortunately we don't have to worry about nuclear winter, that's been largely discredited (the atmospheric models that were used were far too simplistic and the reality seems to be we may actually get a more temperate and less changeable climate out of things - somebody once described it as a Nuclear Autumn). The ozone layer also won't be a problem - it'll regenerate fast enough and the effects of the bombs may actually be beneficial.

The ugly side of life continues. Abortion and contraception are likely to be highly illegal. We MUST have those babies. There will be more than enough parents who have lost their own (or have received too high a radiation dose) to look after any that are unwanted. Women are enslaved by their reproductive systems again. Don't like that but there is nothing we can do about it. The social pressure on women to have children will be immense in both material and moral senses. Women who can have children get the best of everything, the cleanest and best food, the most comfortable housing, the most careful protection. Women who can have children but refuse to do so will be social outcasts (and in this sort of society to be an outcast is virtually a death sentance). We're likely to see a situation where women of childbearing age are "protected" by severe restrictions ("don't go outside the house, the radiation may harm your babies" gets abbreviated to "don't go outside") . This is a grim and disturbing picture; we take an old woman out of her house and throw her in the snow to provide shelter for a pregnant mother and her children - then lock her in. Newborn babies obviously damaged by radiation are likely to be killed on the spot. That may or may not be justifiable but I think its inevitable.

No electricity, limited medicine, almost no dentistry, no travel - we really are back to the middle ages. The fallout patterns and other things shift so its likely we'll see communities having citadels they can retreat to if necessary. Gasoline runs out cars will go; we're back to horses for transport. Fortunately we don't need factories to make more horses. Justice by the way is run by Judge Lynch. Don't expect to attack a woman and survive. Guns are also a declining asset. As the ammunition runs out we'll be making weapons in blacksmiths shops. Its interesting to see what the designers will come up with, using modern know-how with 17th century assets. We'll probably see bows and arrows come back into fashion - and that means metal body armor.

Eventually when conditions permit, our new society moves back to rebuild the A-country. It'll be a long, long time before there is another Federal Government (such things need technology to survive - a calculated guess is that it would take two centuries before a powerful central government evolved again - if it evolves)

[TinFoilHat]

Thanks, Stuart. That's really helpful. I'm planning out the details for a post-apocalyptic RPG I'll be running, and would like to have a reasonable idea of what such a world would work like to start from. I'll be printing out your essay and using it to help plan the campaign.

Although I'll also be throwing in less realistic elements such as the failed alien invasion which triggered the nuclear war, and the armies of undead which rose afterwards...

[Stuart]

Thanks, Stuart. That's really helpful. I'm planning out the details for a post-apocalyptic RPG I'll be running, and would like to have a reasonable idea of what such a world would work like to start from. I'll be printing out your essay and using it to help plan the campaign.

Although I'll also be throwing in less realistic elements such as the failed alien invasion which triggered the nuclear war, and the armies of undead which rose afterwards...

A couple of extra things to think about. One is that a nuclear holocaust wouldn't be just nuclear; there would be substantial chemical and biological components as well. Also, the effect of radiation on biological organisms is such that whole clutches of new diseases are likely to be created. That'll act as a serious damper on trade and travel - people are going to want to be sure that they're not exposing their communities to a nasty case of the never-get-overs before letting strangers in. It would be interesting to speculate on the social customs that would generate.

Another is that values are going to shift. I'm thinking here of trade values more that moral ones (although that's an interesting topic as well). For example, steel may become more valuable than gold, clean food more valuable that jewels. Legends of "A Great Treasure" may lead to a supply of preserved and non-radioactive food.

Another thing to watch are hot-spots. These can be truly lethal and make radiation detectors an absolute necessity. It's quite possible that an area appears to be relatovely cool and safe yet one spot, a few feet in diamater can be deadly hot. Try going to this link Chenobyl Biker. It contains good advice on travelling in contaminated areas (that is one gutsy lady by the way). The trouble with hot-spots is that there is usually no visible warning of danger. Perhaps one could see legends about malevolent ghosts or evil spirits "defending" something being the product of such hot-spots.

[ktesibios]

I think I see a big mistake in Stuart's narrative- the idea that the light flash and the thermal effects propagate at different velocities.

All of the direct radiation from a nuclear detonation- whether it be microwaves (EMP), infrared, visible light, ultraviolet or x and gamma rays- will propagate at the velocity of light.

The fireball expands much more slowly, but it's the radiant energy that accounts for most of the thermal injury.

The burns inflicted on people who are in line of sight of the detonation and close enough to be burned are caused by the heating effects of their skin absorbing radiant energy, which arrives nearly instantaneously.

If you're in the open and close enough to suffer thermal burns, there won't be any warning. By the time your brain can register the flash, its work has already been done.

[frogesque]

Stuart wrote: ^ above

A very well written and thought provoking essay, though I'm not sure that women of child bearing capacity will become quite the baby machines you envisage.

Assuming some remnant of humanity does survive the immediate post-nuclear horrors we have to hope that a good proportion of our knowledge base will survive intact also. Basic knowledge of farming techniques, water treatment, hygiene, cloth-making, structures, and metalworking will be at a premium. My guess is that initially there would be plenty of scrap metal around and that housing survivors wouldn't be too great a problem but a community is only viable if it can live within its means. Knowledge of those resources, how to exploit them and where to find them will be vital if a return to subsistence living is to be avoided.

Yes it does make sense to use those who are elderly or not able to bear family as the gofors to scavenge cities for usable goods such as tinned food, tools and materials. It also makes sense to protect teachers nurses and doctors because they will be an investment for the future but women can and do already perform a great many of those functions in their everyday lives and I think to merely use them for procreation would be a poor way to employ that asset.

There would inevitably be some sorting and sifting of the remnant population. The 'best' (strongest, most practical, brightest) will find their places at the top. They will become the protectors, artisans and organizers of any new society because we are basically tribal in nature and they will provide the direction and cohesive force keeping that burgeoning civilization moving forward.

A wholesale baby boom would be detrimental to that process because it would overstretch precious resources precipitating a self-destructive anarchy.

[Stuart]

I think I see a big mistake in Stuart's narrative- the idea that the light flash and the thermal effects propagate at different velocities. All of the direct radiation from a nuclear detonation- whether it be microwaves (EMP), infrared, visible light, ultraviolet or x and gamma rays- will propagate at the velocity of light.

The description of the effects and the sequence they occur in is taken directly from "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" written by Samuel Glasstone and published by the US Department of Defense. There are a variety of editions - mine is the 1964 version, a later edition was published in 1977. Its about $400 each but this investment is a great way of ruining any chance of getting a good night's sleep for weeks. If you buy a copy, make sure it has the "nuclear blast computer" in the back. This is a declassified and much simpler version of the pie cutter used to calculate the effects of nuclear laydowns on a target. Another very, bvery good source is this link that will give you a lot of first-class data on nuclear weapons effects Doom

Mr Johnson is a regular contributor to this site and I have nothing but respect for his expertise in this area.

One of the reasons why we're a bit finickly about etrminology is that a nuclear initiation isn't an explosion and doesn't behave like one. Its actually a very complicated series of events that takes place over a period of time. Close in, it doesn't make much difference but if you're far enough out to survive the initial effects, the light flash does warn you where the blast shadows are. Its one of those things; if the initiation is over your head, you're gone whatever you do but the further out you are, progresively simpler things give progressively greater chances of survival

[Stuart]

We have to hope that a good proportion of our knowledge base will survive intact also. Basic knowledge of farming techniques, water treatment, hygiene, cloth-making, structures, and metalworking will be at a premium.

Hope yes, but we'll have to work at that. The trouble is that a lot of such knowledge is held in the A-country and its gone. Also, more is locked up in people's heads and people die. One thing I would forsee is a desperate effort to preserve as much information as people can. Remember, an aweful lot is held on computers and they're fried by EMP. incinerated in the A-country or simply deprived of power. I get a picture of people frantically transcribing records form computers to paper while the batteries last.

My guess is that initially there would be plenty of scrap metal around and that housing survivors wouldn't be too great a problem but a community is only viable if it can live within its means. Knowledge of those resources, how to exploit them and where to find them will be vital if a return to subsistence living is to be avoided.

I agree absolutely, but I don't think a return to subsistence living is avoidable. I'd envisage life styles and living standards as being of American First Frontier settler style. Again, the problem with things like scrap metal is that, left to its own devices, it rusts. That makes it a declining asset. There is going to be a huge pile of assets left over in the B-country but there is a lot to do with it and we have to get a lot done before that pile is depleted.

Yes it does make sense to use those who are elderly or not able to bear family as the gofors to scavenge cities for usable goods such as tinned food, tools and materials. It also makes sense to protect teachers nurses and doctors because they will be an investment for the future but women can and do already perform a great many of those functions in their everyday lives and I think to merely use them for procreation would be a poor way to employ that asset.

Poor perhaps but I think its inevitable. Remember, reliable contraception is a product of modern industrialized society; the emancipation of women is a direct result of the development of contraception. Deprived of reliable contraception, we're back to the old social mores. Women have a choice - pregancy or chastity. And, deprived of modern aids, pregnancy is disabling. Also, it is a known phenomenon that baby-booms follow disasters that cause mass casualties (hence the baby-boomers after WW2). I don't like this idea but I think its largely inevitable.

There would inevitably be some sorting and sifting of the remnant population. The 'best' (strongest, most practical, brightest) will find their places at the top. They will become the protectors, artisans and organizers of any new society because we are basically tribal in nature and they will provide the direction and cohesive force keeping that burgeoning civilization moving forward.

Agreed, I don't give much chance for people in my line of business though

Development of a new aristocracy and new social priorities will be an interesting "work-in-progress". Again, I'd envisage going back to the settler era with a lot of influence from the Scottish Clan system.

A wholesale baby boom would be detrimental to that process because it would overstretch precious resources precipitating a self-destructive anarchy.

On the other hand, survival (farming, rebuilding etc etc) is labor intensive. The age of machinery is gone, probably for decades. Within three to five years, food production is going to use 18th century technology. In that environment, children are an investment - the amount of food produced is directly proportional to the number of hands doing the work. In the short term, a baby boom would stretch resources but in the longer term, kids growing up are probably the greatest resource the community has. Balancing short-term penalties against long-term survival is going to be the key to communities surviving or vanishing. A typical feature of pioneer cultures is large numbers of children and that gives us a hint as to the right answers.

[bobjohnston]

Stuart's on target with his detailed analysis. One thing I would disagree with is the triage response and ways in which children, women, etc. are dealt with. Whether or not this is the rational response to further recovery, I don't believe society at large or (generally) in small groups will be pursuing rational policies to this degree. In particular, in the hardest hit areas, groups of survivors will pursue practices that will differ widly. Even if there were an authority to dictate such practices, I think the negative social effects would mitigate any contribution to survivability.

While a little fictionalized, I'll point out this account I wrote some years back:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nucl...clearwar1.html

A disclaimer on my description: Stuart had a different take on attacks (or lack of) on non-aligned nations in one of these forums awhile back, and I believe his points are valid.
I think it's here...

http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...sc&start=0

On the issue of hotspots: I haven't run the numbers, but areas dangerously radioactive from your average groundburst will be limited after 50 years. The bigger issue, which Stuart alluded to, is areas that got fallout from strikes on sites storing high-level waste--this includes mostly nuclear power planets. Such areas could remain hazardous until erosion sufficiently disperses the radioactivity.

On ktesibios's comment on thermal effects: I think you're confusing the speed of propagation with the rate of release. For a 1-mt weapon, for example, much of the initial energy release is tied up as thermal energy of the fireball, which takes on order 10 sec plus to be radiated.

Nuclear winter as it was promoted in the 1980s is now discounted.

[TinFoilHat]

Would it be accurate to assume that major cities (such as Manhatten or Chicago) would be, between the initial blast effects and following firestorms, nothing but rubble piles? How large would the area in which no structures remain at all be? (Complex question, I know, since we're not looking at a simple single-bomb-per-city issue, but multiple ground and surface explosions aimed at specific strategic targets.)

How safe would it be to walk around somewhere subjected to particularily intense bombardment? I know that Hiroshima is perfectly safe and non-radioactive today, but that was a single much smaller bomb than what we use today, and an air-burst.

I would expect former nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, and waste repositories to be the biggest long-term radiation hazard.

[numbskull]

I too have a bit of a problem with the projected rationality of the surviving population. I imagine that power and religion will play an important role in upsetting the "what must be done" rational aspects of human survival. Don't forget that B country communities are often more influenced by fundamental religious morality. Same goes for small town power.

Great essay by the way Stuart.

[Stuart]

I too have a bit of a problem with the projected rationality of the surviving population. I imagine that power and religion will play an important role in upsetting the "what must be done" rational aspects of human survival. Don't forget that B country communities are often more influenced by fundamental religious morality. Same goes for small town power.

I don't believe society at large or (generally) in small groups will be pursuing rational policies to this degree. In particular, in the hardest hit areas, groups of survivors will pursue practices that will differ widly. Even if there were an authority to dictate such practices, I think the negative social effects would mitigate any contribution to survivability.

Both of you are saying much the same thing and you both make very goodpoints supported by strong arguments. Post-laydown society will effectively revert to a small-town level of government and I believe Bob's right, there is going to be a great deal of variation in how those communities organize and rule themselves. A study of disasters seems to show that religions splits two ways - people either go towards a revivalist type of religion "The Burning Was Punishment From God" or reject religion altogether "A God Would Have Not have Allowed This". It seems to be about a 50/50 split - but that's an average. There are going to be some communities where the religious faction will dominate, others where the atheistic faction will dominate and a third group where the two live in an easy - or uneasy - balance.

An uneasy thought for you, there are also going to be communities where the woo-woos dominate and set the style for the surviving community. Its easy to see such groups as the Planet-Xers or astrologists or creationists taking over. In such places, its quite likely that conventional science would be rejected completely, along with associated book-burnings (and, quite possibly people-burnings). This gives rise to another unpleasant problem, there is going to be a lot of conflict over resources and what constitutes resources. Suppose we have a scientifically-literate community that hears a neighboring fundamentalist astrologist community has a stockpile of rare, irreplacable science textbooks - and is burning them as "heresy." Do they go to war to save the books?

The position of women in such communities is, unfortunately, less open to variation. Its determined by biology and by the ingrained instinct for survival (on a group rather than an individual basis). Its an unfortunate truth that group survival is predicated on women, not men. A society can lose 90 percent of its men, pick up the pieces and keep going (its been done; look at some of the wars in South America and Africa). If that society loses 90 percent of its women, they're dead, they've just joined the Dodo and the Dinosaurs. So "women and children first" or "The Birkenhead Drill" isn't a polite custom or a gentlemanly construct, its a biological imperative. The alternative is extinction.

That translates directly into our post-laydown society. The truth is that women of childbearing age are a community asset and the "women and children first" principle will kick in (without any conscious effort on the part of the participants) to conserve that asset. Darwin will kick in as well; societies that expend their childbearing women in dangerous roles such as exploration and/or fighting will lose them and thus lose out in the long run (remember, babies are really an investment in providing future manpower for production of food and services). Societies that don't, won't. In addition we're stuck with the fact that pregnant women are effectively disabled by pregnancy, in the third trimester, seriously so. That's a problem we can't get around, not without large investments in mdoern technology. Remember also that, post-laydown, giving birth is going to be seriously dangerous, unless great care is taken, women are going to be dying in childbirth in unsustainable numbers.

This shift back to a pre-industrialized type of gender discrimination in society won't happen overnight or be decided rationally, it will just happen. I suspect that it would start simply by people taking extra care of women who are already pregnant, then as more women become pregnant (and the rate of pregnancies increases due to the lack of reliable contraception), the "extra care" becomes more common and gets extended to women who might be pregnant and then to women who could be pregnant. At the same time, the passage of time means that customs become established then ossified.

Incidently, the same line of argument suggests that matriarchal societies will become the norm. Its inevitable from the basic biological premise that men are expendable, women are not. Its likely that descent lines will be traced through women, not men. and that suggests strongly where the ruling authority for society will be.

[Stuart]

Would it be accurate to assume that major cities (such as Manhatten or Chicago) would be, between the initial blast effects and following firestorms, nothing but rubble piles? How large would the area in which no structures remain at all be? (Complex question, I know, since we're not looking at a simple single-bomb-per-city issue, but multiple ground and surface explosions aimed at specific strategic targets.)

The last question really is unanswerable, to determine the answer you need a tool called a "piecutter". This is a circular mechanical computer with a series of dials and verniers. The procedure is to set the equipment to the conditions of the initiation and that gives a window which tells you the results of the event in terms of a whole clutch of radii for different events. If you get "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons", it has a simplified and unclassified version of a piecutter in the back.

The best and most effective way of taking out a city is a low airburst; provided the fireball doesn't touch the ground, radiation won't really be a problem 50 years on. Of course if one of the target sets in that city requires a ground burst, that will result in a world of hurt.

How safe would it be to walk around somewhere subjected to particularily intense bombardment? I know that Hiroshima is perfectly safe and non-radioactive today, but that was a single much smaller bomb than what we use today, and an air-burst.

I would expect former nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, and waste repositories to be the biggest long-term radiation hazard.[/quote]

[numbskull]

Incidently, the same line of argument suggests that matriarchal societies will become the norm. Its inevitable from the basic biological premise that men are expendable, women are not. Its likely that descent lines will be traced through women, not men. and that suggests strongly where the ruling authority for society will be.

Mmmm, not sure about that. Yes, fertile women are the most valuable asset but why were most medieval communities not matriarchal? Simply because men are physically stronger and will dominate. I'm afraid a post-apocalyptic society will put back women's lib a couple of centuries.

[Stuart]

Mmmm, not sure about that. Yes, fertile women are the most valuable asset but why were most medieval communities not matriarchal? Simply because men are physically stronger and will dominate.

Again, a very valid point. I think the main difference, though, is likely to be education. During the Middle Ages, education was largely in the hands of the Church - an organization that was male-dominated - so there was a self-reinforcing system. In a post-laydown society, bringing up children and their education is likely to be in the hands of women and will reflect that environment. I can see a situation arising where power is exercised by men, but which men get to exercise power is decided by women (which, by the way, happened quite often in the Middle Ages).

I'm afraid a post-apocalyptic society will put back women's lib a couple of centuries.

Undoubtedly; Again, I'd refer you to the society and culture that evolved along America's First Frontier. I believe that is actually a pretty good model for cultural and technical averages in the fifty years after the Laydown.

[mike alexander]

Fascinating musing on a terrible topic. Everyone is commended for civility and listening to each other. May I add two pence?

While the analogy is not exact, history does tend to rhyme. I was thinking of the 14th century and the effects of the Plague. While not instantaneous, the initial outbreak killed about (the numbers are not well known and varied widely from locale to locale) 25% of the population within 2 years; by century's end 50 years later (with subsequent outbreaks) the population of Europe was reduced by half or more. Many thought it divine retribution and thought the end of the world was at hand.

At the same time old orders were disintegrating and mutating; The lord and serf system was being replaced, loyalties to lord and land were fighting against the rise of nationalism, towns and commerce were putting more power in the middle class, the first major stirrings of fracture were becoming apparent in Christianity (in western Europe; the Rome/Constantinople split was a long-established fact), and by the end of the century the Turks were knocking on the door of Hungary.

What is surprising to me (in my reading at least) is just how much did not change. The changes that did occur seemed to be from processes underway before the plague broke out. The Protestant Reformation traces back to Wycklif, Hus, the Lollards and others a hundred years before Calvin, Luther and the rest. International markets were a roaring success by the early 1300s (The Hundred Year's War put a terrific crimp in the England/Flanders wool and fabric trade. The Hanseatic League was already a hundred years old). England was turning France into France by trying to make it England.

I've seen no obvious evidence that following the decimation of the plague that women's status changed or that everyone decided to have as many children as posible. Style of governance was changing, but it had been changing anyhow, in part due to the rise of commerce and the switch to a monetary economy. In short, the disaster itself did not seem to change people; they were changing as a result of forces even stronger and more sweeping than the plague.

There are, of course, tremendous differences as well. Our civilization depends much more heavily on concentrated and/or easily transportable energy sources; instantaneous communication is not only taken for granted but has become essential for many things; many of the easily extractable natural resources (fossil fuels, minerals) are used up;and as has been mentioned before, many of our records are now held in a form unavailable to the unaided human eye (but I would add that most of the basic stuff still exists in print form, and the sheer number of copies augurs well for its overall survival). And a hundred years after the lowest point, we watch the Renaissance.

Nothing in the last thousand years of humanity has come close to the banging around Europe got in the 1300s. I just wonder what it could tell us about our own possible radiant furure?

[AKONI]

*Predicts a more powerful weapon than a nuke-type-thing*

You'd better hope we don't come up with antimatter bombs. Yeowch!

- Maha "SDI ain't gonna stop that one" Vailo

The science for the already exists. The only thing stopping their production is that a 10MT Fusion bomb (several thousand exist) is equal to 290gallons of anti-matter. At the current understanding / technology we have on how to produce anti-matter, it would take all of the production energy on earth around 2 million years to make that much.

So we are safe... for the next few years at least. (When some nutcase in some country figures out how to make anti-matter more easily.)

I was reading through some old posts. When I came across this one I decided to do a google search on antimatter bombs...

I found this...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGM393GPK1.DTL

[Glom]

Thanks, Stuart. That would be an interesting movie provided it was driven by mindless radiophobia.

The bit about an attack on London makes me feel much better.

Incidentally, how much is fusion used in nuclear arsenals?

[Stuart]

Incidentally, how much is fusion used in nuclear arsenals?

On paper, most of the strategic warheads used by the major powers are fusion devices. However, there is a crunch here. Due to some design characteristics (and the overwhelming desire to make devices as clean as possible), even in a fusion device, most of the explosive yield comes from the fission component, not the fusion. In fact, the fusion component simply is there to make the fission component more efficient. It really is a good question as to whether the modern fusion devices in the US arsenal really are fusion at all.

The "new" nuclear powers (Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) all use fission devices although India has tested a booster fission device. We've got to the point where we really don't need to test elementary fission devices; they are so well understood that, if you built it, they will work. Then somebody goes and proves otherwise. The Pakistani nuclear tests involved very simple gun-configuration nuclear devices like the ones used on Hiroshima. The Mark 1 laydown on Hiroshima was the first of that particular type, it's so simple, it can't possibly fail. The Pakistani device failed, it was a fizzle. Why we do not know although there some interesting theories knocking around.

[sarongsong]

Furthermore...
"...The Russians are building tremendous new nuclear/biological and chemical weapons systems--all with the assistance of US technology transfers. They are deploying on average, 3 new Topol-M 6th generation ballistic missiles per month..."
http://www.joelskousen.com/

[Kebsis]

That's strange. Last I heard, the Russians couldn't even afford to keep their submarine fleet from rusting to dust, and they're trying to broaden their nuclear arsenal?