[PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

[L. Marcus]

. . . Ever thought that a limited exchange of nukes (or heck, just one side lobbing them about) would be better to the environment?

 

Not so, New Scientist says!

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Interesting article, though it isn't serious game fodder unless your catastrophe is going to be horribly realistic where the world falls apart slowly over several years or the characters are going to be a generation or more removed from the collapse.

 

Matt "Nuke-'em-'till-they-glow" Frisbee

[Captain Obvious]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Well, there's a good point about the ozone layer there, but I can't see how anyone gets up in arms over a 1.5 degree C drop in temperature when everyone says that the temperature has gone up almost that much in the last century and will go higher even if we cut CO2 emissions now.

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Ok following with what the article had to say, much of the 3world nations would either starve to death or tear themselves apart to try to get what others had. Now places like Europe, UK, Cananda, and the US would have shortages, but would become safe zones and their millitarys would mobilize to guard their boarders and maintain the peace. Life would be a struggle but it would basically go on.

 

Penn

[Comic]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

The Canadian military mobilizing to guard Canada's borders?

 

Uh.. You do know Canada only borders one other country, right?

[L. Marcus]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

How about Russia? Just a little leap over the Pole.

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

The Canadian military mobilizing to guard Canada's borders?

 

Uh.. You do know Canada only borders one other country, right?

 

They would stop folks from sailing in from Asia and Russia!

 

Penn

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

the US would stop the folks from South the Boarder, Kill on sight!

 

Penn

[Toadmaster]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

I don't believe any of these people anymore. According to the nuclear winter people the oil fires in Kuwait were supposed to change the environment catastrophically. Didn't seem to work that way when they actually got lit off.

[Cancer]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

I'd need to see the original paper. Depending on what they took as possible scenarios, there could be real data to test them against; the era of atmospheric nuclear tests might be an analog for a (very) limited nuclear exchange. Sigh. Another item to hunt down in the library and read.

[Doctor Agenda]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

The math was based on insufficient data and many scientists had reservations about it...but who wants to be the guy to say nuclear war might not be THAT bad?

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Consider also another result from a "limited" nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. As I see it, there would be a domino effect akin to History's so-called "barbarian migrations" of Central Asia (tribe A suffers calamity and invades westwards, displacing tribe B who also heads west to get away from A, and thus displaces tribe C, and so on) - except on a colossal scale.

 

Fact is that India's and Pakistan's mutual dislike has always been deep-seated to the point of outright scary. So what happens if they go nuclear?

 

For a start, use of the word "limited" is rather misleading here. Such a conflict would only be limited in the sense that the combatants would be (mostly) concentrating on each other. India outguns Pakistan in every possible category - area, economy, military strength and so on - and Pakistan's military would be all too aware of this. Therefore, I would expect Pakistan to use everything it has right from the start. Use it or lose it, as they say.

 

Initial result: Much of Pakistan is glassed over, remember it isn't that big a country to start with. Depending on how much of their nukes are launched, India can probably expect to take heavy hits but survive, more or less. At least, to start with, anyhow.

 

What is next? Fall-out would spread. My understanding is that, given the prevailing winds, most of the fall-out from Pakistan's destruction would, ironically, end up back in India.

 

This is when it starts to get exceptionally nasty. There are a billion-plus people living in India and Pakistan combined. Assume that at least half of this survives the initial exchange (probably a much lower proportion in Pakistan, but still). Fall-out, fear of same and disruption of services would turn many of these survivors into refugees. Areas in India that seem to initially handle things well could find themselves overwhelmed by the aftermath, and soon be providing additional refugees.

 

Where next? In this event, we probably can write off Bangladesh. It is a tiny and horrendously crowded country that is basically surrounded by India on three sides. Between fall-out, contaminated water fron the Ganges (on the delta of which Bangladesh is located) and the likely influx of refugees from India, it does not bode well. Which means more refugees.

 

So, where next for all these people. Any adjacent country, probably. This means Iran, Afghanistan, Tadjikhistan, China / Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and Sri Lanka. Most of these nations are comparitively small. Most have more than enough worries to deal with under the best of circumstances. Which means it will be a horrific mess whatever else happens.

 

Expect a lot of refugee boats. Ocean currents will push a lot of them westwards towards the Middle East, but it is likely that many will try for south-east Asia and/or northern Australia. Further problems. North-west Australia is very inhospitable, and everywhere else is crowded with people, so further ugliness can be expected.

 

One special consideration is China's role in this hypothetical exchange. Historically and culturally, China and India have never gotten on well. Also, presumably on the basis of "...My enemy's enemy is my friend...", China is now quite friendly with Pakistan. So that could complicate things even more. I don't believe that China would necessarily jump in on Pakistan's side, but the possibility is something that India would need to consider - or that China could move to take advantage of a weakened India afterwards.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Just for the record, Pakistan is 310,000 square miles, about twice the size of California, and Bangladesh is 55,000, not exactly big, but at least larger than New York State. (It is also more exactly on the delta of the Brahmaputra than the Ganga.)

The customary gloom-and-doom scenarios for a limited nuclear exchange of c. 100 warheads are fair enough, but fallout poisoning the entire Indian subcontinent to the point of making a billion people flee the continent across the Tibetan plateau/ jungles of Assam/Baluchi desert:idjit: seems a little unlikely.

But I'm really popping in to be the wet blanket and point out that the whole "Volkerwanderung" thing about migratory tribes pushing each other across Eurasia is a nineteenth century myth with precious little actual evidence justifying it, as distinct from the handwaving of a surviving hardcore minority of academic specialists.

[Mentor]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

How many nuclear bombs worth of stuff were kicked up into the atmosphere by the eruptions of Pinatubo or Mt. St. Helens?

 

OTOH, if we are going to get mutant powers or zombies from the post apocalyptic "science" why not mass starvation to give us those one billion potential zombies?

[Cancer]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Volcanic eruptions may or may not be good analogs for the effects of a war. Volcanoes vary a lot in terms of how much stuff they inject up high; St Helens, a lateral blast, didn't throw up anywhere near as much as Pinatubo, which was more vertical. Also, the chemical content of the volcano's ejecta varies more than you might guess. Sulfur oxide droplets do a lot of cooling, as they block a pretty broad piece of spectrum, and the sulfur content does vary from volcano to volcano. And, of course, the content and total mass of stuff put in the atmosphere by a bomb blast depends on what the ground was like at ground zero, and the altitude at which the bomb was detonated.

 

That's why I said I'd want to see the original paper and see what they assumed. Those assumptions really do matter. And I admit I've been [strikeout]lazy[/strikeout]busy and haven't tracked down the original reference to see what really was done.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

Just for the record, Pakistan is 310,000 square miles, about twice the size of California, and Bangladesh is 55,000, not exactly big, but at least larger than New York State. (It is also more exactly on the delta of the Brahmaputra than the Ganga.)

The customary gloom-and-doom scenarios for a limited nuclear exchange of c. 100 warheads are fair enough, but fallout poisoning the entire Indian subcontinent to the point of making a billion people flee the continent across the Tibetan plateau/ jungles of Assam/Baluchi desert:idjit: seems a little unlikely.

But I'm really popping in to be the wet blanket and point out that the whole "Volkerwanderung" thing about migratory tribes pushing each other across Eurasia is a nineteenth century myth with precious little actual evidence justifying it, as distinct from the handwaving of a surviving hardcore minority of academic specialists.

 

I stand corrected on the river name. Type in haste, repent at leisure, so to speak.

 

As for the rest, I did not say that a billion people would go on the move, I hypothesized that there would be fewer, given that a large percentage would probably not survive the initial hostilities (or, maybe, DO survive but opt to stay put no matter what). I also pointed out that portions of India may well survive the initial exchange in good order. Perhaps quite large portions. However, the influx of refugees afterwards and attendant panic could well overwhelm these regions. Overall, the refugee problem COULD snowball, especially given the shaky state of most neighbouring countries.

 

Yeah, there are a whole bunch of "coulds" there, I agree. But this is a worst case scenario - nuclear wars (and their aftermath) tend to follow that line.

 

It doesn't necessarily require that the whole of the Indian subcontinent be significantly poisoned by fall-out either. But I expect that there would be plenty of low-level stuff to go around, however, and that a LOT of people would be doing their damnedest to get away from it.

 

As for the "Volkerwanderung" comment. well, barbarian invasion domino efects that span the whole of Eurasia may not be the case, but there is evidence to suggest that this sort of thing has happened on a much more modest scale at various times and places in history. The book 'Catastrophe' by David Keys has some very interesting theories about this due to a chain of events circa 535 AD.

 

As regards the global climate, I am less alarmist. Effects would be perhaps comparable to that from a couple of major volcanic events. Not good, but not necessarily apocalyptic either. But the humanitarian crisis would more than make up for this.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

A common saying amongst my fellow soldiers back in the 1980's was: "All the towns in Germany are two kilotons apart." It was a way to represent the damage radius of tactical nuclear weapons and as a warning not to overkill a target. It stemmed from military doctrine of the time that NATO was going to use tactical nukes to offset the numerical superiority of the Warsaw Pact forces. Fast forward to the current day -- but the saying still holds true of many other countries in the world.

 

Matt "Doom-and-gloom" Frisbee

[egaroadkill]

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

 

I’d say forget the doom and gloom, atomic angst and radiation melodrama for now and save fretting over it if after they have thirty years of an unrestricted nuclear arms race and couple of thousand megatons between them. For now any nuke exchange between them would not be a radioactive world holocaust but it would be a prelude to one nasty real war between many other players that’s been brewing for some time.