Most likely South America, large portion of Africa, Mexico etc. will survive relatively unharmed. Nothing interesting to nuke there. So will smaller towns. A global disaster -- yes, for sure, risk to the survival of the entire mankind -- no, not even close.
This is a very fortunate reality. There has been no major war in Europe for over 70 years, unbelievable.
Best regards, Piotr
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** So radioactive fall out is not a problem ?Goes world wide in a few weeks.
** Irrelevant too...... Phil
It is but its radioactivity falls off by a factor of 10 for every 7 fold increase in time from 1 hour after the detonation. Within a fortnight it is 0.1% of what it was immediately after the blast. There are a lot of short lived isotopes in the fallout plume and also some rare earth isotopes that are metastable but not observed naturally.
All bets are off if there are a lot of ground bursts but they make the most mess in their neighbourhood and downwind. Military prefer airbursts for this reason and the much larger damage profile it produces.
I would actually be more worried about the effects of firestorm smoke on the overall temperature of the planet in the longer term assuming that I could survive the first couple of weeks. Some of the Silicon valley hyper rich have been buying up bunkers with high end luxury properties in New Zealand in anticipation of the risk you are worried about.
Of the WMD worth worrying about for terrorist use designer biological and chemical weapons are a significantly greater threat than nuclear.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
Do you see the difference betwen a severe problem an a guaranteed mass extinction? Extreme increase of cancers? Sure. Very shortened average life expectancy? Perhaps. Extreme hunger? Likely. Extinction? No, not really.
A number of Hiroshima citizens have had survived the nuclear strike in spite of being there for a long time afterwards. So why should, say, the inhabitants of distant Bolivia suffer imminent death? Even the majority of the infrastructure will remain intact, as it is wery well distributed all around the world. So are libraries, that is, knowledge.
Extremely relevant: there has been no war for precisely that reason. An attack on a NATO member (or of the Warsaw pact, if you prefer) would result in a massive retaliation, including deployment of nuclear warfare. Better not to start a fight if you can't win. The logic behind MAD.
Perhaps a new net abbreviation would be in order for calling out some of the garbage quality reasoning we see expounded all too often: "BSSBS" (Bill Sloman-Standard BullShit). :-D
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Curistor Doom and NT think that they can recognise reasoned argument.
Their definition seems to be based on the idea that sound reasoning is what leads to conclusions that they like.
There's absolutely no evidence that either of them can follow reasoned argument - they routinely reject it out of hand - and they certainly can't produce it.
What they want is Gullible Twit Fodder, and they do seem to have an enormous appetite for it.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
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