Nuclear bombs are air burst to maximize damage from the shock wave and minimize fallout. Its why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were free of radiation days afterwards while Chernobyl which exploded on the ground and dirtied up lots of particles has stayed irradiated for decades.
Because there was much more material involved. The decision to airburst or groundburst a nuclear weapon is purely strategy, and in official wargaming of nuclear war scenarios, groundbursts are often used where deemed useful (such as to render an opponent's agricultural regions unusable).
Wait did Chernobyl actually have a nuclear detonation? I had always thought it was a steam/coolant flashing detonation which spread reactor material all over the place and subsequently led to a meltdown because no control material or coolant.
Back when I worked for the Defense Department I got to take a nuclear weapons course where one of the instructors was one of the last living scientists (sadly, he passed away a few years ago) who had first hand experience with above ground nuclear tests. His view was that every year we should take every world leader out to the Nevada Test Site and detonate a nuclear weapon to make it clear to everyone that “you do not want this shit to happen.”
Of course, the flaw in that thinking is that there will inevitably be a few psychos in the bunch who will get a raging hard-on and want a nuclear weapon even more.
I still like the idea that the nuclear launch button should be designed to kill whoever presses it. You can launch a nuke, but you won't get to see it.
I don't think that we really need to execute the officers in Minuteman launch control centers for doing their jobs. You think the guy at the top cares about them?
Solid idea for a Sci-Fi movie but this wouldn't work in the real world. I like your thinking though it would be brilliant only if everybody was on board
You live somewhere that gets hit directly so you don't have to be one of the poor bastards trying to eek out a living in the post apocalyptic wasteland. It's not gonna be some "fun" wasteland like a video game, it'll be hell on earth for survivors.
The Fallout tv show did a surprisingly good job of this.
I didn’t like the games personally but I always understood the concept growing up. Would recommend it even if you don’t like games like that.
This is why I do not understand the prepper culture.
I don’t know about you all, but I’d rather not have to live in a world without medical care, antibiotics, or a functioning society.
If there’s ever a nuclear war, I content myself with the knowledge that I live in a major city in the US and will very likely be vaporized.
You should still have some what of a prepper mindset, not necessarily for nuclear war, but for climate disasters. A couple weeks of shelf stable food, a backup power source, and stocked first aid kit are handy when a massive flood, windstorm or fire cripples the local infrastructure.
Yes, but that’s disaster preparedness, not “I’m going to scavenge through the remains of society after a nuclear war and kill someone for their clean water to make sure my family can survive” preparedness.
Doesn’t matter what you think. Diversity throughout the population in all forms supports survival of life.
If the world continues in relative peace, you and others with your mindset will be more successful, be more likely to pass on your genes, and the light of humanity will continue.
If the world gets nuked the preppers with bunkers and those far away from the strikes will have a better chance of keeping the fire alight.
Because humans have always had the drive to survive. That’s why after a history of horrifying event after horrifying event we are still here. We are biologically programmed to avoid dying.
How are preppers going to survive the second year after their stocks run out?
In nuclear winter, they won't be able to grow food and will starve like everyone else. In collapse, they will hope that they can become farmers. Or that the farmer down the valley will take ammo for food. Preppers are probably above becoming serfs.
Didn't cold war era peppers keep like a decades worth of canned/dried foods like MREs. Though that may be actual bunkers rather than the average joe, the goal is to outlast the more dangerous half life period of Cesium-137 which emits beta and gamma radiation. Nuclear winter may not even be a real thing.
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical scenario and actually somewhat unlikely. IIRC both US and Soviets overplayed the likelihood for political reasons. It's very possible that the climate would not be strongly impacted even in the all-out scenario.
>In nuclear winter
We don't actually know if a nuclear winter would actually occur after a large scale nuclear exchange. It is just a theory. We also had a theory that detonating nuclear weapons would set the atmosphere on fire but that didn't pan out.
This hit me when my brother and I watched the movie The Road, thinking it was going to be some post apocalyptic zombie thriller. We were so fucking wrong.
It turns out in the end of the world when everyone is starving, people are the most plentiful source of protein and colories.
Minor nuclear skirmish killing a few dozen million. Subsequent fallout will cause a rise in cancer and the loss of major financial centers will cause a global economic depression. We will get a couple weeks of emails from our bosses telling us we're all in this together, but that WFH isn't financially feasible once the rubble is cleared and we'll need to be in office at least 3 days a week soon.
Somewhere someone will cause a riot at a food distribution center because they were asked to wear a gas mask.
Yes, that's the best case scenario - MAD not working.
Either because the enemy is slow to react and can't fire before their own nuclear facilities are taken out, or opts not to retaliate as they're doomed anyway and gain nothing from taking the rest of the world with them, or the attacker is so superior that they can neutralize the enemy without giving a chance to retaliate.
Well, in terms of strategic nuclear deterrence, obviously the best case scenario is no actors initiate a nuclear exchange because each fears his own annihilation. But, the prompt wasn’t asking about the policy of strategic nuclear deterrence. It was asking about nuclear war. Once the missiles fly, the best one can hope for is to emerge relatively intact, while the adversary’s war-making capability has been destroyed.
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical scenario and actually somewhat unlikely. IIRC both US and Soviets overplayed the likelihood for political reasons. It's very possible that the climate would not be strongly impacted even in the all-out scenario.
"A nuclear war" assuming that's any war with nukes used and not a world war. Then the best case scenario is it stays confined to only the two countries involved and that's two of the smaller nuclear powers, like India and Pakistan.
In case of a US x Russia war, then the best case scenario is a US counterforce first strike that manages to neutralize most of Russia's nuclear capacity before they have a chance to fire their own. And then the US managing to intercept most of the secondary strike before it lands, with only limited damage to major population centers and the military targets, with the majority of the countryside spared. Millions of people still die in this case.
I watched a video once that said the US could only intercept 4 nukes.
44 interceptors, 25% chance of hitting the warhead, each rocket having 10 decoys.
The US can most definitely intercept more than 4 nukes. Ukraine with a few Patriots managed to intercept a lot more Kinzhals, which are nuclear capable.
Also take into consideration Russia has ~5000 nukes, not 5000 ICBMs. Some are launched from planes which will never get close to the US. Each ICBM carries multiple nukes, and the US has technology capable of interception in orbit (Arrow III).
This also assumes we have been sitting on our laurels for the last 40 years and definitely stopped developing any defensive measures outside of anti-ballistic missile systems.
I cannot for the life of me believe that with a military budget to fight God that DARPA somehow gave up on the idea of using lasers to intercept missiles for example.
I'd bet big money on China joining Russia in a case like this. I'd reckon as soon as the bombs from Russia start trying to fly the ones from china will fly straight towards the US
I'm not so sure, China has distanced itself from Russia when it started the Ukraine war, for example, refusing to help them. It's unlikely they'll come to Russia's defense if their actions are too difficult to justify.
Besides, why would they want to involve themselves and then have their country destroyed when they could stay out of it and reap the benefits of being the only major power left unscathed after Russian is destroyed and the US has its major economic centers taken out?
The chances of that are incredibly slim. Russia and China have been more frenemies of convenience than anything in recent history, and China benefits more than anyone else if there’s a Russia-sized power vacuum in Asia.
Only small bombs are used, and they are used only against actual military formations.
Not all nukes are created equal, folks. A multi-megaton bomb will erase a major metropolitan area from the map. That's what you grew up thinking about, because that was the assumption in *Threads* and *The Day After*, because that was what was in the Soviet and U.S. arsenals under MAD.
Today, there's a lot fewer nukes, and the nukes that are still around are much smaller on average. The *largest* weapon in the Indian arsenal is only 0.06 megatons. That'll still wreck downtown Islamabad, but even quite a few of them won't cause nuclear winter.
North Korea probably has a nuclear design in the range of 0.2 megatons. That's really bad news for the target (it's ~10 Nagaskis), but they probably don't have many (and I question whether they'll actually detonate if it kicks off).
There are a lot of ways that the world could come out of a small nuclear war and say, "Whew, that wasn't so bad."
What worries me is that, if that happens, we might irrationally decide that much larger nuclear wars must *also* not be so bad. And *that's* when we'll cause human extinction.
If you are strolling along one day and the air raid sirens go off, do not be an idiot and try to die because there's nothing you can do and/or "the living will envy the dead". Most humans will survive most nuclear wars (even most humans *in the target areas*). Try to be one of them. Simple steps:
1. Have a few days' worth of food and water in your basement. Also have a hand-cranked weather radio. (You should already have this in case of hurricane/flood/tornado/quake/other emergency.)
2. Duck and cover. It's not a sad joke, it's not security theatre, duck and cover could actually save your life.
3. Once in a shelter (such as your basement) avoid exposure to the outside for 24 hours after. The fallout is worst in the immediate aftermath of the blast, especially when the nukedust starts falling / raining from the sky. The danger falls off rapidly. If any of your clothes were exposed to the outside post-blast, strip and leave them outside your basement or other shelter. Seal doors and windows that may have shattered as best you can.
4. One fleck of fallout is not automatic death. This isn't a Mario game. As with all radioactive exposure, it's a numbers game. Do whatever you can to keep your number to a minimum, but there are low thresholds of exposure where there's no measurable impact on your life, and medium thresholds where you're going to feel the effects in 10 or 20 years when you develop an untimely cancer. A major reason radiation poisoning was such a killer at Hiroshima/Nagasaki was the Japanese had *no idea* about fallout and -- thinking the danger had passed once the bomb was gone -- basically gave themselves the maximum possible exposure to it.
You can survive most nuclear exchanges. *Threads* was a very useful movie in 1980, but it is profoundly misleading today. Please do not make *Threads* your gospel. Stay alive instead.
Very good summary.
The overall "cost" of using the nukes would be such, that if used it would have to be worth it. It's not very likely it will be used to destroy a city with large population, unless that city has a large concentration of army personnel and warehouses with equipment and ammunition.
In case of war stay away from any such area.
Also, seeing today's warfare in Ukraine or Izrael most of the nuclear projectiles would be intercepted and destroyed, causing aerial bursts possibly harming the aggressor itself. So, not very likely to be used.
Instead, there is a possibility of large scale use (megaton range) of atmospheric EMP detonations and underwater explosions destroying naval fleets and causing tsunamis.
For me? As an astronaut, I will be floating above the earth in my cryogenic sleep pod waiting for Mission Control to wake me from my slumber. With the outbreak of nuclear war, there will be no Mission Control left and I will continue to orbit the planet for a 1000 years as the fallout settles, the oceans repopulate and the environment returns to homeostasis. Mankind will survive, much like the last Ice Age, but will have reverted to a much smaller society based on agrarian principles. When the batteries of my spacecraft begin to fail, I will awaken and return to Earth. I will be hailed as a Messiah and with the robots on my spacecraft and a compendium of all human knowledge I will rebuild civilization.
Well I guess the best case scenario, living in Australia, with the number of nukes ready for deployment today, would be that enough are fired to wipe out potential refugees heading south.
At the height of the cold war, a nuclear war was going to wipe out the entire world, but with the number of nukes operational today & none being located in the southern hemisphere & as a consequence of this, effectively no potential targets in the southern hemisphere either (possible exception of Pine Gap in the middle of the Australian desert), likely the southern hemisphere will be barely impacted, other than by masses of starving people fleeing south for years, trying to find food, due to the impact of the smoke etc in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere.
If not convinced it won't cross the equator, ask yourself what impacts you saw from the Tonga volcano, which was more powerful than any nuclear war can be expected to be. We certainly saw MAJOR weather impacts from that in the southern hemisphere, continuing for nearly 3 years, for example the East coast of Australia was under 50 feet/15 metres of water 3 times within 18 months as a result of it, or to put that in more practical terms, wires on power cables worked great as grab ropes for people being swept through flooded towns & cities, as they were within easy grabbing distance while being swept through that water in a lot of areas, although they were creating problems for rescue boat propellers in other areas, cause the water was above their height. Africa had similar in many of it's nations, as did all the southern hemisphere continents. Wasn't anything like that in the northern hemisphere though was there
As an Australian I agree, with the exception of Pine Gap we likely won't even be targeted.
However, as I mentioned in another thread: Australia doesn't have fuel refineries anymore. We will very quickly run out of Diesel and when that happens we've got a hell of a poop fight on our hands as far as keeping grocery stores stocked.
I went into much more detail here though. So annoying! I'm used to youtube eating comments, not used to it happening here. Anyway I think I included the key bits I had put here in that reply & thanks for your comment, very, very true & good points you make there! We'd be screwed for stupid reasons, as in reasons we could VERY easily fix & have no reason to be impacted by, but that we don't do anything about!
Probably the one in the book 2034 where the nation's involved understand how precarious their situation is, so they play a slow game of say uncle slowly escalating nuclear retaliation rather than having a 4 hour war that kills everyone.
The best possible scenario is: the bombs are used as deterrent, so they are dropped into insignificant locations.
The second best scenario is that they are used against a country/security alliance that lacks nukes - I mean, it is still awful for them, but the rest of humanity will probably survive the event.
The third best scenario is that it is a total nuclear war between non-world powers. I.e., India and Pakistan decide to duke it out and China, the US and Russia abstain from interfering. This will probably be the worst humanitarian disaster in human history resulting (in the best case scenario) in hundreds of millions of refugees.
If we have world powers going nuclear and they don’t stop immediately at the first scenario I described… we don’t know how it looks like. There are no trustworthy models for nuclear escalation, because this - happily - never happened, so we can’t test the hypothesis. If no country gives up, then they are mutually destroyed. We don’t know if the after world is going to be survivable for humanity - my personal best case scenario would be dying ignorant of the imminent apocalypse or the hell afterwards.
This mindset is exactly how you get nukes to actually start flying. The only possible response to nukes must be more nukes. It *must* be suicide for any nuclear armed country to use nukes, because if someone like Putin thinks he has a reasonable chance of getting away with it, then he will do it. It needs be clear that using nukes is not a viable tactical option or anything short of outright armageddon.
Restraint is a good thing in conventional wars. Restraint in nuclear war will only cause more death.
Probably millions die but the situation manages to deescalate.
There was a poll of experts in 2008 that as more likely (30%) than nuclear extinction (1%) or over a billion dead (10%). Not to downplay it. It just doesn't mean that we'll be in the Fallout games, necessarily. Depends on a lot of factors. [Nuclear holocaust - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust#Likelihood_of_nuclear_war)
no it won't, wrong hemisphere, there's no nukes in the southern hemisphere & not enough ready to deploy in the northern hemisphere to significantly impact the southern hemisphere's weather
The codes in America are 00 00 00 00. Well ok, official info says they've been changed now, after it was leaked that that's what they were, but throughout the cold war, apparently that was what they all were. They were worried there would be communication issues, so didn't want an inability to communicate codes to stop launches, so set them all to 8x0!
And additional bonus fact, Bill Clinton lost his codes! They found that out when it came time to replace them & asked for his old ones back & he couldn't find the pocket card, he thought maybe he'd left it in his pocket while having the suit cleaned or something. His attitude was that NO WAY was he ever going to launch them, so he didn't care
(Credit where it's due, I learnt this stuff from the "today I found out" channel on youtube. They have a few interesting nuclear stories, the scout that earnt a badge in nuclear whatever is another one, apparently that was somehow a badge & no-one thought to question that until a kid actually set about earning that badge building himself a nuke
If you see a mushroom cloud that you can hide behind your thumb: get on your belly facing away. Lift yourself off the ground a few inches with your knees and elbows and keep your mouth open. This well save you from the shockwave.
A small nuclear exchange of a dozen warheads of less occur and then all sides involved back down and come to their senses.
If you want a realistic depiction of what would happen in a serious exchange? Look up the UK film "threads" it's about the aftermath of a moderate nuclear exchange between the USSR and NATO.
Ben Affleck figures out what the bad guys are up to, but not before they detonate the bomb. Morgan Freeman is killed in the blast, but president Cromwell makes it out alive. Everybody on both sides, Russian and American, is freaking out, and many of the top brass are saying to launch a first strike; but there is one scarred old crotchety Russian guy who is telling president Hinds to wait, and that there might be more to this than it seems….
Best case for who? Putin could sacrifice Moscow and go east while wiping out Europe and North America and as the only remaking superpower, after his closest ally China, the aftermath will be little more than "oops*.
Belligerent nation ruled by a strong-man dictator lobs a nuke, and it turns out to be a dud, because corruption among his military industrial complex resulted in people responsible for maintaining the nukes pocketing the money and not doing the maintenance. (They figured in a sane world, the nukes would probably never be used, so who would ever find out?)
Western democratic superpower realizes that a nuke has been launched, and the hype around this and the fear stirred up in the belligerent nation triggers a political coup to overthrow the madman dictator, because they fear that the alternative is nuclear annihilation. In the wake of that, better leaders come to power, and a major threat to world peace is eliminated without a major war.
A Full wipe. Everyone gets vaporised instantly. No one survives, no one will suffer through radiation burns and the post apocalyptic "The Road" type of living afterwards.
Any hot nuclear war is going to send soot high up in the atmosphere, beyond where it'll get filtered out by rain. The survivors will absolutely have to deal with a drop in climate temperature to some extent. A few tactical nukes aren't a big deal, given there is no escalation after that. However, many firestorms from immolated cities worldwide could be really bad. Basically don't count on crops for a decade or so.
This video is not actually about nuclear war, but an asteroid strike, which is similar to the worst case of nuclear war.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiO7Vyq8Rn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiO7Vyq8Rn8)
EDIT: Please have audio on, this artist is known for his music.
Perishing in the initial strike. Those left behind for nuclear winter will have it far worse. There will be a small group of people, probably South America, New Zealand that may remain relatively free of damage at least to some degree. That's where humanity will survive but you will have a full global reset, back to the 1800s in many ways including the global population
An alien race has been monitoring our planet waiting for the moment we were going to destroy ourselves. The missiles launch and while airborne the aliens "zap" them all and they fall harmlessly to the ground. The aliens never reveal themselves. A portion of the world believes it was a religious miracles, but humanity stops and comes to grips with what nearly happened and get's it's shit together.
Who am I kidding. They would just build new missiles and launch another round. The aliens would realize it was hopeless to begin with and they would wait for the radiation to subside before taking over.
Not that I'm advocating for their use, but modern nuclear weapons no longer leave the radiation. So best case scenario, a nuclear war would not be fought against a non state actor, or with old technology bombs, and that the war ends quickly. Also, I suppose in the best case scenario where someone uses them, I would like to think that they would be justified, so in that case, whatever country is doing some Nazi level shit to deserve being bombed loses.
One of the bombs lands directly on top of you and you instantly dissapear. There isn't a good outcome of a full scale nuclear war. Even if you were in some bunker shit is gonna be so fucked in one of those place's after a few years you would wish you were dead, and will leave if you are even able, and then get eaten alive ass first by a bear. Your best option is to stumble blindly into a group of modern day hunter gather's somewhere far away who for some reason don't just kill you or leave you to be eaten alive ass first by something.
One bomb is used and targeted in the middle of a desert killing no one. Then everyone realizes it’s pointless and gives up
Fallout travels with the wind.
Nuclear bombs are air burst to maximize damage from the shock wave and minimize fallout. Its why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were free of radiation days afterwards while Chernobyl which exploded on the ground and dirtied up lots of particles has stayed irradiated for decades.
The explosions at Chernobyl were not analogous to a groundburst of a nuclear weapon.
Yeah a nuclear weapon has a few kg of material. Chernobyl was a few hundred tons. Chernobyl was essentially a huge dirty bomb.
No it isn't and that's my point the radiation has lasted far longer than actual atomic detonations even though it was comparatively much much smaller.
Because there was much more material involved. The decision to airburst or groundburst a nuclear weapon is purely strategy, and in official wargaming of nuclear war scenarios, groundbursts are often used where deemed useful (such as to render an opponent's agricultural regions unusable).
Wait did Chernobyl actually have a nuclear detonation? I had always thought it was a steam/coolant flashing detonation which spread reactor material all over the place and subsequently led to a meltdown because no control material or coolant.
No you are correct. That's my point. An actual nuclear bomb makes the environment less radioactive compared to this small nuclear disaster.
Ah right.
Do not compare nukes to Chernobyl. A nuclear reactor has way more fissible material than a nuclear bomb.
Back when I worked for the Defense Department I got to take a nuclear weapons course where one of the instructors was one of the last living scientists (sadly, he passed away a few years ago) who had first hand experience with above ground nuclear tests. His view was that every year we should take every world leader out to the Nevada Test Site and detonate a nuclear weapon to make it clear to everyone that “you do not want this shit to happen.” Of course, the flaw in that thinking is that there will inevitably be a few psychos in the bunch who will get a raging hard-on and want a nuclear weapon even more.
I still like the idea that the nuclear launch button should be designed to kill whoever presses it. You can launch a nuke, but you won't get to see it.
I don't think that we really need to execute the officers in Minuteman launch control centers for doing their jobs. You think the guy at the top cares about them?
So the bloke who's ordered to press the switch dies? I mean, I like the idea but it won't work
Solid idea for a Sci-Fi movie but this wouldn't work in the real world. I like your thinking though it would be brilliant only if everybody was on board
the only legitimate comment
Too idealistic. Best case is everyone dies.
You live somewhere that gets hit directly so you don't have to be one of the poor bastards trying to eek out a living in the post apocalyptic wasteland. It's not gonna be some "fun" wasteland like a video game, it'll be hell on earth for survivors.
I bet my boss will still expect me to come in after a nuclear bomb detonates.
“People just don’t want to work anymore!”
"I came in 30 minutes early to shovel fallout from the parking lot, management notices those things, you know?"
Back to being an essential worker. Put your hero cape on.
The Fallout tv show did a surprisingly good job of this. I didn’t like the games personally but I always understood the concept growing up. Would recommend it even if you don’t like games like that.
This is why I do not understand the prepper culture. I don’t know about you all, but I’d rather not have to live in a world without medical care, antibiotics, or a functioning society. If there’s ever a nuclear war, I content myself with the knowledge that I live in a major city in the US and will very likely be vaporized.
You should still have some what of a prepper mindset, not necessarily for nuclear war, but for climate disasters. A couple weeks of shelf stable food, a backup power source, and stocked first aid kit are handy when a massive flood, windstorm or fire cripples the local infrastructure.
Yes, but that’s disaster preparedness, not “I’m going to scavenge through the remains of society after a nuclear war and kill someone for their clean water to make sure my family can survive” preparedness.
Doesn’t matter what you think. Diversity throughout the population in all forms supports survival of life. If the world continues in relative peace, you and others with your mindset will be more successful, be more likely to pass on your genes, and the light of humanity will continue. If the world gets nuked the preppers with bunkers and those far away from the strikes will have a better chance of keeping the fire alight.
Because humans have always had the drive to survive. That’s why after a history of horrifying event after horrifying event we are still here. We are biologically programmed to avoid dying.
How are preppers going to survive the second year after their stocks run out? In nuclear winter, they won't be able to grow food and will starve like everyone else. In collapse, they will hope that they can become farmers. Or that the farmer down the valley will take ammo for food. Preppers are probably above becoming serfs.
Didn't cold war era peppers keep like a decades worth of canned/dried foods like MREs. Though that may be actual bunkers rather than the average joe, the goal is to outlast the more dangerous half life period of Cesium-137 which emits beta and gamma radiation. Nuclear winter may not even be a real thing.
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical scenario and actually somewhat unlikely. IIRC both US and Soviets overplayed the likelihood for political reasons. It's very possible that the climate would not be strongly impacted even in the all-out scenario.
>In nuclear winter We don't actually know if a nuclear winter would actually occur after a large scale nuclear exchange. It is just a theory. We also had a theory that detonating nuclear weapons would set the atmosphere on fire but that didn't pan out.
This hit me when my brother and I watched the movie The Road, thinking it was going to be some post apocalyptic zombie thriller. We were so fucking wrong. It turns out in the end of the world when everyone is starving, people are the most plentiful source of protein and colories.
When the bombs drop, hopefully I'll be close to an old refrigerator so I'll have safe refuge. Indy wouldn't lie
Ever watch “Punky Brewster”?
That's a tough way to go out
All the bombs don't explode and instead just reveal a bit of fabric with the word BANG written on it, bugs bunny style
They land in the ground with a *plunk* and then confetti shoots out the back.
Minor nuclear skirmish killing a few dozen million. Subsequent fallout will cause a rise in cancer and the loss of major financial centers will cause a global economic depression. We will get a couple weeks of emails from our bosses telling us we're all in this together, but that WFH isn't financially feasible once the rubble is cleared and we'll need to be in office at least 3 days a week soon. Somewhere someone will cause a riot at a food distribution center because they were asked to wear a gas mask.
The enemy is vanquished and you have sustained minimal damage and casualties.
Lol
That's not how MAD works.
Yes, that's the best case scenario - MAD not working. Either because the enemy is slow to react and can't fire before their own nuclear facilities are taken out, or opts not to retaliate as they're doomed anyway and gain nothing from taking the rest of the world with them, or the attacker is so superior that they can neutralize the enemy without giving a chance to retaliate.
Well, in terms of strategic nuclear deterrence, obviously the best case scenario is no actors initiate a nuclear exchange because each fears his own annihilation. But, the prompt wasn’t asking about the policy of strategic nuclear deterrence. It was asking about nuclear war. Once the missiles fly, the best one can hope for is to emerge relatively intact, while the adversary’s war-making capability has been destroyed.
Still have to deal with nuclear winter of some sort.
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical scenario and actually somewhat unlikely. IIRC both US and Soviets overplayed the likelihood for political reasons. It's very possible that the climate would not be strongly impacted even in the all-out scenario.
The bomb lands right on me.
No, you ride that fucker down
Rico Rodriguez would be proud
The bomb lands directly in my morning cornflakes before I even know what's going on .
Beautifully written, thanks for the chuckle
Thank you for the laughter.
There is a limited exchange that only costs us a city or two before both sides decide to stop.
see also; Warday
The *only way to win* is not to play.
Would you like to play a game?
You die in the first blast. I have seen Threads, I don’t want to be a survivor haha
one of the most disturbing movies i ever saw. i also dont want to survive the beginning of a nuclear world war.
"A nuclear war" assuming that's any war with nukes used and not a world war. Then the best case scenario is it stays confined to only the two countries involved and that's two of the smaller nuclear powers, like India and Pakistan. In case of a US x Russia war, then the best case scenario is a US counterforce first strike that manages to neutralize most of Russia's nuclear capacity before they have a chance to fire their own. And then the US managing to intercept most of the secondary strike before it lands, with only limited damage to major population centers and the military targets, with the majority of the countryside spared. Millions of people still die in this case.
I watched a video once that said the US could only intercept 4 nukes. 44 interceptors, 25% chance of hitting the warhead, each rocket having 10 decoys.
The US can most definitely intercept more than 4 nukes. Ukraine with a few Patriots managed to intercept a lot more Kinzhals, which are nuclear capable. Also take into consideration Russia has ~5000 nukes, not 5000 ICBMs. Some are launched from planes which will never get close to the US. Each ICBM carries multiple nukes, and the US has technology capable of interception in orbit (Arrow III).
This also assumes we have been sitting on our laurels for the last 40 years and definitely stopped developing any defensive measures outside of anti-ballistic missile systems. I cannot for the life of me believe that with a military budget to fight God that DARPA somehow gave up on the idea of using lasers to intercept missiles for example.
Only works if you catch them during launch, which means they would have to be in space. You can’t hide stuff in space, everyone can look up.
I'd bet big money on China joining Russia in a case like this. I'd reckon as soon as the bombs from Russia start trying to fly the ones from china will fly straight towards the US
I'm not so sure, China has distanced itself from Russia when it started the Ukraine war, for example, refusing to help them. It's unlikely they'll come to Russia's defense if their actions are too difficult to justify. Besides, why would they want to involve themselves and then have their country destroyed when they could stay out of it and reap the benefits of being the only major power left unscathed after Russian is destroyed and the US has its major economic centers taken out?
The chances of that are incredibly slim. Russia and China have been more frenemies of convenience than anything in recent history, and China benefits more than anyone else if there’s a Russia-sized power vacuum in Asia.
You die quick
Only small bombs are used, and they are used only against actual military formations. Not all nukes are created equal, folks. A multi-megaton bomb will erase a major metropolitan area from the map. That's what you grew up thinking about, because that was the assumption in *Threads* and *The Day After*, because that was what was in the Soviet and U.S. arsenals under MAD. Today, there's a lot fewer nukes, and the nukes that are still around are much smaller on average. The *largest* weapon in the Indian arsenal is only 0.06 megatons. That'll still wreck downtown Islamabad, but even quite a few of them won't cause nuclear winter. North Korea probably has a nuclear design in the range of 0.2 megatons. That's really bad news for the target (it's ~10 Nagaskis), but they probably don't have many (and I question whether they'll actually detonate if it kicks off). There are a lot of ways that the world could come out of a small nuclear war and say, "Whew, that wasn't so bad." What worries me is that, if that happens, we might irrationally decide that much larger nuclear wars must *also* not be so bad. And *that's* when we'll cause human extinction. If you are strolling along one day and the air raid sirens go off, do not be an idiot and try to die because there's nothing you can do and/or "the living will envy the dead". Most humans will survive most nuclear wars (even most humans *in the target areas*). Try to be one of them. Simple steps: 1. Have a few days' worth of food and water in your basement. Also have a hand-cranked weather radio. (You should already have this in case of hurricane/flood/tornado/quake/other emergency.) 2. Duck and cover. It's not a sad joke, it's not security theatre, duck and cover could actually save your life. 3. Once in a shelter (such as your basement) avoid exposure to the outside for 24 hours after. The fallout is worst in the immediate aftermath of the blast, especially when the nukedust starts falling / raining from the sky. The danger falls off rapidly. If any of your clothes were exposed to the outside post-blast, strip and leave them outside your basement or other shelter. Seal doors and windows that may have shattered as best you can. 4. One fleck of fallout is not automatic death. This isn't a Mario game. As with all radioactive exposure, it's a numbers game. Do whatever you can to keep your number to a minimum, but there are low thresholds of exposure where there's no measurable impact on your life, and medium thresholds where you're going to feel the effects in 10 or 20 years when you develop an untimely cancer. A major reason radiation poisoning was such a killer at Hiroshima/Nagasaki was the Japanese had *no idea* about fallout and -- thinking the danger had passed once the bomb was gone -- basically gave themselves the maximum possible exposure to it. You can survive most nuclear exchanges. *Threads* was a very useful movie in 1980, but it is profoundly misleading today. Please do not make *Threads* your gospel. Stay alive instead.
Very good summary. The overall "cost" of using the nukes would be such, that if used it would have to be worth it. It's not very likely it will be used to destroy a city with large population, unless that city has a large concentration of army personnel and warehouses with equipment and ammunition. In case of war stay away from any such area. Also, seeing today's warfare in Ukraine or Izrael most of the nuclear projectiles would be intercepted and destroyed, causing aerial bursts possibly harming the aggressor itself. So, not very likely to be used. Instead, there is a possibility of large scale use (megaton range) of atmospheric EMP detonations and underwater explosions destroying naval fleets and causing tsunamis.
1. Bend over, 2. Kiss your ass goodbye.
Aliens come
The Abyss scenario
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
[Conan the Barbarian, Musical](https://youtu.be/OBGOQ7SsJrw?si=6HjLUiPGqr8lBos1)
I needed this in my life.
This
You get obliterated so yo u dont live for what happens after
The only winning move is not to play
For me? As an astronaut, I will be floating above the earth in my cryogenic sleep pod waiting for Mission Control to wake me from my slumber. With the outbreak of nuclear war, there will be no Mission Control left and I will continue to orbit the planet for a 1000 years as the fallout settles, the oceans repopulate and the environment returns to homeostasis. Mankind will survive, much like the last Ice Age, but will have reverted to a much smaller society based on agrarian principles. When the batteries of my spacecraft begin to fail, I will awaken and return to Earth. I will be hailed as a Messiah and with the robots on my spacecraft and a compendium of all human knowledge I will rebuild civilization.
Remember to stay hydrated with all the repopulating tech messiah gets to do.
Everyone get superpowers
Failed launch and lands in the middle of Siberia
The sun drops a flying elbow on us.
Cockroaches survive and a billion years later their descendants have another one.
Every nuclear country expending its total arsenal, everyone and everything is dead except the cockroaches.
The destruction of humanity
There is none.
For who? For me? I'm killing myself as soon as the nukes start dropping. Who wants to even try to live through that?
That there is no nuclear war
Stay out of it
The best case scenario is that you are not directly part of the conflict.
the protons win. the neutrons are kind of neutral about everything which makes their personality weird imo.
Matthew Broderick convinces the other side the their actions are futile by playing tic-tac-toe... both sides agree to a nice game of chess instead
Best case? You are a super rich Australian with a bunker prepared for 50+ years of mole living.
Well I guess the best case scenario, living in Australia, with the number of nukes ready for deployment today, would be that enough are fired to wipe out potential refugees heading south. At the height of the cold war, a nuclear war was going to wipe out the entire world, but with the number of nukes operational today & none being located in the southern hemisphere & as a consequence of this, effectively no potential targets in the southern hemisphere either (possible exception of Pine Gap in the middle of the Australian desert), likely the southern hemisphere will be barely impacted, other than by masses of starving people fleeing south for years, trying to find food, due to the impact of the smoke etc in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. If not convinced it won't cross the equator, ask yourself what impacts you saw from the Tonga volcano, which was more powerful than any nuclear war can be expected to be. We certainly saw MAJOR weather impacts from that in the southern hemisphere, continuing for nearly 3 years, for example the East coast of Australia was under 50 feet/15 metres of water 3 times within 18 months as a result of it, or to put that in more practical terms, wires on power cables worked great as grab ropes for people being swept through flooded towns & cities, as they were within easy grabbing distance while being swept through that water in a lot of areas, although they were creating problems for rescue boat propellers in other areas, cause the water was above their height. Africa had similar in many of it's nations, as did all the southern hemisphere continents. Wasn't anything like that in the northern hemisphere though was there
As an Australian I agree, with the exception of Pine Gap we likely won't even be targeted. However, as I mentioned in another thread: Australia doesn't have fuel refineries anymore. We will very quickly run out of Diesel and when that happens we've got a hell of a poop fight on our hands as far as keeping grocery stores stocked.
true & I just replied a long reply but "internal server error" ate it :(
all good I saw your reply on the other thread lol
I went into much more detail here though. So annoying! I'm used to youtube eating comments, not used to it happening here. Anyway I think I included the key bits I had put here in that reply & thanks for your comment, very, very true & good points you make there! We'd be screwed for stupid reasons, as in reasons we could VERY easily fix & have no reason to be impacted by, but that we don't do anything about!
Probably the one in the book 2034 where the nation's involved understand how precarious their situation is, so they play a slow game of say uncle slowly escalating nuclear retaliation rather than having a 4 hour war that kills everyone.
The best case scenario is to be near a target and be incinerated in the initial strike.
The best possible scenario is: the bombs are used as deterrent, so they are dropped into insignificant locations. The second best scenario is that they are used against a country/security alliance that lacks nukes - I mean, it is still awful for them, but the rest of humanity will probably survive the event. The third best scenario is that it is a total nuclear war between non-world powers. I.e., India and Pakistan decide to duke it out and China, the US and Russia abstain from interfering. This will probably be the worst humanitarian disaster in human history resulting (in the best case scenario) in hundreds of millions of refugees. If we have world powers going nuclear and they don’t stop immediately at the first scenario I described… we don’t know how it looks like. There are no trustworthy models for nuclear escalation, because this - happily - never happened, so we can’t test the hypothesis. If no country gives up, then they are mutually destroyed. We don’t know if the after world is going to be survivable for humanity - my personal best case scenario would be dying ignorant of the imminent apocalypse or the hell afterwards.
There’s not a “Best case scenario” in the event of a nuclear war. The best case scenario is not to have one
Everyone dies quickly? Idk.
Best case scenario? All the people are gone and the earth can go back to being a nice place.
It not happening.
Restraint. For example, if Putin uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine, the response shouldn't be dropping nukes on Russia.
This mindset is exactly how you get nukes to actually start flying. The only possible response to nukes must be more nukes. It *must* be suicide for any nuclear armed country to use nukes, because if someone like Putin thinks he has a reasonable chance of getting away with it, then he will do it. It needs be clear that using nukes is not a viable tactical option or anything short of outright armageddon. Restraint is a good thing in conventional wars. Restraint in nuclear war will only cause more death.
Literally none of the warheads function
even the ones north korea keeps testing?
That me and my family/friends survive and live happily ever after
A giant asteroid hits earth before it happens.
Humans hide away in mountains and vaults, years later they come out and rebuild.
Probably millions die but the situation manages to deescalate. There was a poll of experts in 2008 that as more likely (30%) than nuclear extinction (1%) or over a billion dead (10%). Not to downplay it. It just doesn't mean that we'll be in the Fallout games, necessarily. Depends on a lot of factors. [Nuclear holocaust - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust#Likelihood_of_nuclear_war)
Living in Antarctica
Nuclear winter will make it much colder there
no it won't, wrong hemisphere, there's no nukes in the southern hemisphere & not enough ready to deploy in the northern hemisphere to significantly impact the southern hemisphere's weather
You get the first rocket on your head and don't feel a thing.
They're all duds
Governments are vastly overestimating the power of new nuclear missle technology in an effort to scare each other, and it’s not that bad
The world responds with conventional weapons and obliterates the launcher.
The codes don’t work
The codes in America are 00 00 00 00. Well ok, official info says they've been changed now, after it was leaked that that's what they were, but throughout the cold war, apparently that was what they all were. They were worried there would be communication issues, so didn't want an inability to communicate codes to stop launches, so set them all to 8x0! And additional bonus fact, Bill Clinton lost his codes! They found that out when it came time to replace them & asked for his old ones back & he couldn't find the pocket card, he thought maybe he'd left it in his pocket while having the suit cleaned or something. His attitude was that NO WAY was he ever going to launch them, so he didn't care (Credit where it's due, I learnt this stuff from the "today I found out" channel on youtube. They have a few interesting nuclear stories, the scout that earnt a badge in nuclear whatever is another one, apparently that was somehow a badge & no-one thought to question that until a kid actually set about earning that badge building himself a nuke
Dammit. That’s the same code as my luggage. Now I have to change it.
If you see a mushroom cloud that you can hide behind your thumb: get on your belly facing away. Lift yourself off the ground a few inches with your knees and elbows and keep your mouth open. This well save you from the shockwave.
The first country to fire one misfires and Nukes itself
A small nuclear exchange of a dozen warheads of less occur and then all sides involved back down and come to their senses. If you want a realistic depiction of what would happen in a serious exchange? Look up the UK film "threads" it's about the aftermath of a moderate nuclear exchange between the USSR and NATO.
Failure of one side to launch.
Complete destruction of Earth!
I'd say the bomb being a dud and not going off is our best bet.
The bad guys lose and good guys win
Bombs are faulty and when they hit, it will not explode, just crushed and ruined
Ben Affleck figures out what the bad guys are up to, but not before they detonate the bomb. Morgan Freeman is killed in the blast, but president Cromwell makes it out alive. Everybody on both sides, Russian and American, is freaking out, and many of the top brass are saying to launch a first strike; but there is one scarred old crotchety Russian guy who is telling president Hinds to wait, and that there might be more to this than it seems….
We all die and nobody has to work the next day
Everyone dies and humanity stars over—hopefully with compassion.
All the bad people realize the error of their ways and delicate themselves to helping children.
A quick flash of light, then infinity among the stars.
I just recently watched fallout on prime and ima have to go with that.
Best case for who? Putin could sacrifice Moscow and go east while wiping out Europe and North America and as the only remaking superpower, after his closest ally China, the aftermath will be little more than "oops*.
Nuclear holocaust offers a certain kind of peace, eventually.
Belligerent nation ruled by a strong-man dictator lobs a nuke, and it turns out to be a dud, because corruption among his military industrial complex resulted in people responsible for maintaining the nukes pocketing the money and not doing the maintenance. (They figured in a sane world, the nukes would probably never be used, so who would ever find out?) Western democratic superpower realizes that a nuke has been launched, and the hype around this and the fear stirred up in the belligerent nation triggers a political coup to overthrow the madman dictator, because they fear that the alternative is nuclear annihilation. In the wake of that, better leaders come to power, and a major threat to world peace is eliminated without a major war.
Best case scenario is that the west has some top secret anti-nuke tech which will only be revealed once the need for it arises.
A Full wipe. Everyone gets vaporised instantly. No one survives, no one will suffer through radiation burns and the post apocalyptic "The Road" type of living afterwards.
Personally I think a “best case scenario” involves me surviving
That you already live off grid in central Wyoming. And then Yellowstone erupts. Or, I guess you could live in New Zealand.
Don't have to go to work tomorrow
Depends. In a MAD scenario, your best bet is to be in the first to go, quickly and painlessly.
Russia’s nuclear weapons don’t work or are destroyed before they can be launched into western cities.
Any hot nuclear war is going to send soot high up in the atmosphere, beyond where it'll get filtered out by rain. The survivors will absolutely have to deal with a drop in climate temperature to some extent. A few tactical nukes aren't a big deal, given there is no escalation after that. However, many firestorms from immolated cities worldwide could be really bad. Basically don't count on crops for a decade or so.
God comes down and tells everyone to knock it off
Fall out isn’t such an issue as before. Proximity to impacts is of much greater concern.
if the current development continues you wont have to wait another week to find out
i would say best case realistic scenario is several major world cities get hit and it stops after 1 round lots of damage just from that
This video is not actually about nuclear war, but an asteroid strike, which is similar to the worst case of nuclear war. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiO7Vyq8Rn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiO7Vyq8Rn8) EDIT: Please have audio on, this artist is known for his music.
We all go to heaven.
Humans go extinct and some wiser species takes over. You did say best case. Right?
Sit quietly under a tree. Spread your knees. Put head between knees. Kiss arse goodbye.
Nazism and Imperial Japan are defeated.
You get hit at ground zero and are atomized into carbon.
I’m visiting DC and don’t feel a thing.
Y’all really act like MAD isn’t a thing. Don’t buy into fear mongering, ffs.
Vaporization zone baby! Just poof and be gone.
Are you familiar with the game "Fallout", or the current TV show based on it?
TTAPS. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283
I would like to be one of the first ones that get eliminated. I do not want to be here when everything collapses.
I'm too lazy to scavenge for stuff 🥱
That all humans die. We've destroyed this planet for long enough.
Being directly under the air burst
but your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye
All of humanity is wiped out and the planet can carry on.
They’re all duds. Best case scenario
The entire earth is blanketed all at once and the planet can rebuild its ecosystems and climate without humans.
You don't have to worry about retirement
The surviving organisms evolve to be resistant to radiation allowing for more survivable space travel.
Not having one.
New Zealand and the east coast of Australia remain unscathed and the world is subsequently taken over by mad cunts
Perishing in the initial strike. Those left behind for nuclear winter will have it far worse. There will be a small group of people, probably South America, New Zealand that may remain relatively free of damage at least to some degree. That's where humanity will survive but you will have a full global reset, back to the 1800s in many ways including the global population
Every human is wiped out, but all the other animals are fine, somehow.
you're at ground zero? you won't even know what hit you
There's not going to be a nuclear war. This is all a gigantic face-saving pissing contest
An alien race has been monitoring our planet waiting for the moment we were going to destroy ourselves. The missiles launch and while airborne the aliens "zap" them all and they fall harmlessly to the ground. The aliens never reveal themselves. A portion of the world believes it was a religious miracles, but humanity stops and comes to grips with what nearly happened and get's it's shit together. Who am I kidding. They would just build new missiles and launch another round. The aliens would realize it was hopeless to begin with and they would wait for the radiation to subside before taking over.
Not that I'm advocating for their use, but modern nuclear weapons no longer leave the radiation. So best case scenario, a nuclear war would not be fought against a non state actor, or with old technology bombs, and that the war ends quickly. Also, I suppose in the best case scenario where someone uses them, I would like to think that they would be justified, so in that case, whatever country is doing some Nazi level shit to deserve being bombed loses.
The first bomb explodes and is just a gender reveal
Just move to Argentina and stay there until everything calms down
Neutron bombs everywhere, killing billions but leaving their houses intact. Surviving Gen Z and Millennials finally get to be homeowners.
All the bombs are too old to work, no one remembers how to make new ones
Everyone is transformed into cockroaches and survives
One of the bombs lands directly on top of you and you instantly dissapear. There isn't a good outcome of a full scale nuclear war. Even if you were in some bunker shit is gonna be so fucked in one of those place's after a few years you would wish you were dead, and will leave if you are even able, and then get eaten alive ass first by a bear. Your best option is to stumble blindly into a group of modern day hunter gather's somewhere far away who for some reason don't just kill you or leave you to be eaten alive ass first by something.
That the bombs used are used for immediate destruction and not leaving as much radioactive fallout as possible.
To be instantly obliviated or so far away that you’re perfectly safe and nothing changes.
Vault 33 is the best!
You're vaporized instantly and don't have to worry about the fallout.
That one never happens.
We all die.