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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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This is true insomuch as you will be dead in all 4 cases, but it's a rather facile observation considering the differences in magnitude of destructive power, not to mention the very serious dangers posed by radioactive fallout.

A full scale nuclear war between east and west in the mid to late cold war (assuming both sides launch their own weapons) would have resulted in the deaths of the majority of the population of all the countries involved, with any population centre worth mentioning being the target of multiple nuclear weapons, as well as sites of strategic importance such as airports, military installations, major hubs of industry, etc. The less important parts of the country that still remain would be very likely covered in radioactive fallout from the (relatively) close detonation of the aforementioned hundreds of nuclear weapons, which would kill a large proportion of the population in a matter of weeks, water, soil and food would be contaminated. Societal collapse would be unavoidable, those that managed to survive the first few months would still find themselves at a greatly increased risk for various cancers and their children would have a substantially increased risk of birth defects.

All of this is without mentioning the as of yet unforseen consequences of detonating tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at once, which I am going to assume would probably not be great.

Themotte likes to talk about "skin in the game" a lot, well if you want a good example of that then I'd point you to the fact that most nuclear planners and those informed about the nature of nuclear war stopped trying to build bomb shelters or bolt holes for themselves and their families at some point in the 60s.

Societal collapse would be unavoidable, those that managed to survive the first few months would still find themselves at a greatly increased risk for various cancers and their children would have a substantially increased risk of birth defects.

This experiment has been run, and IIRC Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s elevated cancer rates aren’t incompatible with both of them being modern industrial societies.

Don't cancer rates vary quite a bit geographically even without nuclear fallout? IIRC Australia has absurd skin cancer rates, but hasn't seen widespread panic and fleeing from this danger. "Twice as likely to die of skin cancer" is concerning and unfortunate, but still not a huge absolute risk.

Yes, although ‘White people with heavy sunshine and lots of beaches’ is the obvious reason there- cancer rates seem mostly to correlate geographically with explanatory variables.

The less important parts of the country that still remain would be very likely covered in radioactive fallout from the (relatively) close detonation of the aforementioned hundreds of nuclear weapons, which would kill a large proportion of the population in a matter of weeks, water, soil and food would be contaminated. Societal collapse would be unavoidable, those that managed to survive the first few months would still find themselves at a greatly increased risk for various cancers and their children would have a substantially increased risk of birth defects.

That's the part that's hugely overblown, and instilling the fear of this scenario was an absolute psyop. Yes, with a large enough arsenal you could inflict millions of deaths, and targeting industrial centers would indirectly result in millions more. Fallout poisoning water and soil in the hinterlands would scarcely be a factor.

I'm also not sure that massive strikes against population centers would be nearly as common as predicted, at least once targeting was good enough to hit something smaller than "that city over there" (although I imagine it would depend on the exact scenario) but even at the height of the Cold War, there were just so many military targets to hit that maximizing for casualties instead of enemy military capability was arguably not the smartest play. Unfortunately a lot of military targets are colocated with large population centers.

But people read the "number of nuclear weapons" and forget that during the Cold War we were planning, at various points, of using those weapons on military targets, and not just bases, but ships, submarines, troop formations, and enemy aircraft – hence the development of nuclear-tipped torpedoes, air-to-air missiles, artillery shells, and anti-ship missiles.

Fallout and radiation poisoning could be bad if someone deliberately tried to maximize it, but conventional nuclear weapons just aren't as dirty as people seem to think. People survived Hiroshima within a thousand feet of ground zero. The guy who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered from radiation poisoning...and lived to be 93.

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