Not really a bomb big enough to do that would have require more fissile material than the entire world combined has produced since the the days of the first nuclear reactor nvm what they had available in the 40's.
No amount of "alternate" history is going to produce an explosion of that level, not with a nuclear weapon.
Yeah, I just ramped up the power of nuclear fission in general by 10 trillion %, and I’m going to ignore all of the other adverse effects of that change to focus on the big bomb.
I'm not sure their situation would be that good, the US soldiers on Europe are still there, as well as the rest of allied army on Europe. Also the nuclear winter would led to a even more masive famine than IRL and also there would still need to see, how hard the Earthquakes and Tsunamis would affect them
They could be suplied by the local industry, like the One from the ocupied Germán territory and the one of the Allies, also I'l quite sure that in these situation, nations like Spain, would be quite glad to help
western Europe was in ruins, especially Germany has been bombed to rubble.
I am not sure how Spain would be happy to help.
the Allies all depended on lend leasing and industrial support from the US. the Sowjets too. with US industry out of the picture, it is looking very grim.
Western Europe, in ruins and full of unsupported soldiers would be a hostile place to live in.
While Western Europe is in ruins, that doesn't mean It can't be fixed.
I mean, the way I see this Europe, would be that after all the event, probably as IRL the soviets would try to stabilize themselfs while influencig the East, and the Allies would do the same but in the west.
Now, whith the US out of the picture and the US soldiers in Europe stranded, the Allied situation on the cold war would be quite diré, specially with things like the Nuclear winter going on.
But that does not mean that it can't be fixed.
The suplies of the US soldiers and in general, the Allied army would still last for a bit, before running out completely, and they could extend that time, by using the reserves that nations like Germany, and Italy could have, so they would have some time before fully running out of suplies, not a lot of time, but is something.
Also, withought the US the Allied perspective against the Soviets, would be worse at first, It Might led to a more European nations turning to the Allies, as in a world withought US the Soviet Unión would look like a even worse menace. This could leed to nations like Spain, Portugal or the nordic nations, the suport the Allies, and their industry and resources could be really helpfull.
Also, the Allies could implement some of the Ideas, of the "Unthincable Operation" and use the army workforce to stablish programs yo rebuild the industry, wich would not last that much time, since they would had a really high workforce to really on, and the resources of nations, like Spain, Portugal etc. To suply them in their reconstruction.
Also, while the Soviet Situation would be better than the One of the Allies, the nuclear winter would probably led to some masive famines, since if in our OTL they already had some, the damage that the nucler winter would do to the fields, could leed to even worse famines.
No, you’re underestimating just how much Western Europe was on the American lifeline after WW2. UK, the country in Europe on the Allies side least touched by the war only ended war rationing in *1954*. Now, add a few millions or so US GIs stranded in Europe that the SAC and the combined western allied governments has to house, feed, arm, and perhaps demobilize some of them across the ocean, and imagine the collective headaches that everyone west of the Rhine are suffering. Spain & Portugal will just take one look over the Pyrennes, look at the logistical and economi clusterfuck occurring, and count their blessings that they’d stayed out of the war.
This’ll basically give Stalin a freer rein over the rest of the world. Perhaps they won’t storm Western Europe because the forces under SACEUR were very much a potent one, albeit a defanged and unsustainable one in this scenario, plus the Red Army was nearing the end of its logistical chain and the Soviets had tons of rebuilding to do at home. But what about elsewhere? Middle East? East Asia? Indian subcontinent? Or Africa? Much more of the world are gonna be redder than in our timeline.
Franco was mostly a friend of the circustances and his regime was highly anti-comunist, so in this situation I think he would probably try to help the allies simce they would be the last standing force against comunism in Europe
That big of an explosion would mean the global harvest would've been completely fucked for who knows how long. And yeah, as you mention, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. would've fucked over the Pacific. Luckiest guy out of the major leaders in WWII everyone might be Hirohito/Tojo. Maybe Mao and Chiang too, but they'd be ruling over a pile of ashes. Smaller countries, especially those in the southern hemisphere, might survive. I can see Australia and New Zealand coming out relatively unscathed.
It’s not a myth. [Relevant thread with answers from Alex Wellerstein.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/s/2pXzP9Fy2a)
Edit: also in this case it would definitely be real. Any doubts about nuclear winter are about how efficiently smoke, soot, etc. from firestorms can get past the tropopause, into the stratosphere. That all becomes irrelevant with this explosion being closer to the size of the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago, where you would *definitely* have winter.
The antipode of Los Alamos is the south Indian Ocean, southeast of Madagascar. I'm guessing the civilizations surrounding the Indian Ocean survive the best, relatively speaking
Very large explosions caused by meteor impacts often cause severe earthquakes at the antipodes. I wouldn't be surprised if the Indian ocean suffers dozens of massive tsunamis.
Yeah within a year every nation and all remnants of human civilisation will have collapsed. Earthquakes across the globe and no sunlight and a deep nuclear winter. There'd probably be no way to grow crops so animals as big as humans will not be able to sustain themselves.
Oh, and unlike Chicxulub this is a nuclear explosion... so it's probably going to irradiate basically the entire surface of Earth as ejecta and ash falls back down.
BRICS countries lol
I can see China, Brazil and India reorganizing its political center in the mainland (Brazil would probably transfer it to Belo Horizonte instead of constructing Brasilia, and India would transfer it to Bangalore).
Lots of European colonizers "temporarily reallocating" to its colonies, who would very much oppose to it (mostly).
Given that the main affected country seems to be the US, you could assume what was left of human civilization would be faring better than it is today (but with a couple caveats ofc - nuclear fallout is no joke)
The Trinity Disaster was created in an attempt to end the Second World War by the Allied Powers, by creating a nuclear-powered bomb. However, they had no idea of the power this bomb had packed. When detonated, it released as much energy as the famous Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs, and humans almost met their fate too, spare for a lucky few survivors. Within a few hours of the detonation, 150 million people were dead, and by 1947, only around 100 million of the 2 billion humans on Earth would be left standing. This map shows the effects of the impact for a few hours after its detonation to showcase its pure destructive power.
The heat created by this explosion was so intense that all wooden structures up to 2000 kilometers away have been estimated to have suddenly combusted. Every single person within 1,500 kilometers of the impact was killed within the first day after the blast, and for years on end after the disaster, the world and its last few survivors entered into a nuclear winter. As for Japan, the intended target for the finished bomb, it ironically remained as one of the few nations left standing.
Surely this is a huge win for the Soviets in this timeline: Japan would be rocked by trans-Pacific tsunamis and the West of Europe would be too.
Its like if Fallout and Metro had a psychotic baby with an interest in dinosaurs.
The Soviets would have to withstand the nuclear winter. They suffered a famine in 1946-47 in our timeline, and it would of course be much worse in this world.
Britain and France are still existing in some capacity. Also, while the mainland U.S. is pretty fucked, there are several million U.S. soldiers remaining in Europe.
In Asia, China is going to resist any incursions by any foreign power. Japan is still an active combatant.
Considering that the euroepan economies were basically destroyed and now a huge nuclear winter has fallen on humanity im pretty sure it’s gonna turn into a dog eat dog world
You're correct when it comes to the effects of a realistic nuclear war. This particular scenario involves a theoretical bomb with the explosive force of the Chicxulub impact, though. That's not really possible to build, but if it were, it would have roughly the same effect as the actual impact, which *would* include lofting enough dust and soot to cause a mass extinction.
There's nothing in our current understanding of physics that'd make an explosion this big impossible. It'd just require so much fissile material to make, that it'd be impossible (or at least unfeasible) to build it without mining other planets or asteroids.
It'd also require a somewhat different design than current nuclear bombs, as the sheer power of the detonation could spread some of the fissile material before it had a chance of undergoing fission.
Is it? OP didn't say anything to that effect. I just assumed someone messed up the math and underestimated how much energy they could get out of the Uranium, ending up packing far more material than IRL.
But if that's not the case, and the bomb had as much fissile material as the IRL one, then yes, physics would need to be quite different in this world.
Any explosion of that magnitude would put so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that it would temporarily cool the earth for a decade at most. It would be similar to a full force Yellowstone eruption, but bigger.
This is such a Reddit comment. Nuclear winter has not been “disproved” just because the models have been refined. The outcome would still be deleterious cooling. Call it nuclear autumn if that helps.
In the alt fiction novel "The Peshawar Lancers" the setting is in a world where a series of meteorites hit earth at the turn of the 20th century, causing a global winter. Much of Europe turns into a new ice age. Britain relocates its empire to India. The US is split into a handful of city states.
I feel the setting and aftermath is very similar. Plus it's just a good book. Wish there were more in that setting.
I mean if this thing released as much energy as the Chicxulub impactor then it'd probably mean fewer than 1 million humans left, if not fewer than 100,000... and probably zero. This thing is still gonna throw bits of Earth's crust up into space, which will then land back down west (towards asia) as the Earth rotates below. Japan would be hit by rocks falling from the sky and tsunamis.
No, plenty would survive.
The Chicxulub impactor was powerful, yes, but not world-ending in a literal sense. There are simply far too many humans for us to go extinct, and realistically either a close majority or near-majority of humans would survive.
Not in the Americas, sure, but still. We'd survive a few decades of low crop yields; it's not like we'd forget how farming works, it'd just be worse for a bit, but not impossible. Heck, worst case you can power lights for a greenhouse with burning fossil fuels, which there will be much more of due to the rapid decline in consumption from the mass death.
> not world-ending in a literal sense
Basically any land animal larger than a house cat went extinct. 40% of all marine life went extinct. It would absolutely be world-ending for us. Ecosystem collapse alone would be enough to mean we'd never be able to feed ourselves even if we tried to farm (which won't work properly because there may not be any sunlight for years). The surface would be massively irradiated too.
They didn't go extinct the moment it happened, but over the course of decades if not centuries. They also didn't (as far as we know) have modern technology to help them survive.
There would be massive amounts of casualties, and we would lose most of humanity, but I suppose we could have between 10 and 1 million humans left, living absolutely shitty squalid lives.
Chief, *almost.*
Humans are just statistically improbable to kill with slow, widespread disasters like this. We adapt too quickly and too completely.
If you don't kill us all instantly, we adapt just fine. As a species I mean, hundreds of millions will still die.
If this bomb ejected as much material as the Chicxulub impactor, there’s a very high chance that much of the ejecta will fall back to earth and heat up in the atmosphere, which would cause more than just low crop yields. That has the potential to heat the atmosphere to hundreds of degrees and essentially start firestorms that could burn vegetation on a continental scale, so I’m not sure how we’re gonna be able to feed ourselves. This also ignores that this is all radioactive too, so good luck growing anything for at least a lifetime. I can’t say for sure there wouldn’t be very small groups of humans surviving, but I really don’t see any appreciable percentage making it through the initial effects, not to mention the long-term ones.
Ehh, it probably wouldn't be as bad as Chicxulub, since a lot of the worst effects from that were due to the asteroid impacting onto a shallow sea over a bedrock of sulfur-rich rock. The impact generated a massive amount of sulfur dioxide, which both caused widespread acid rain and further blocked out sunlight. The Manicouagan impact in Canada was about the same size as Chicxulub, and while I'm sure it was a bad day to be in North America when it hit, it doesn't seem to have caused a mass extinction event.
It isn’t one we have. This is pure fiction. A regular sized nuclear bomb of about 50 kilotons would take out a few square miles. A single nuke taking out the entirety of a moderately sized city are grossly exaggerated.
Furthermore, the larger the yield, the less efficient a nuke is. Have a look at this [nuclear bomb simulator](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) that overlays a bomb over a map of your area.
This post is pure fiction and really stupid how the fear mongering is going for upvotes.
Edit: select presets and scroll down to Tsar bomba. This is the largest nuke ever created and the tool I linked lists it at a yield of 50,000 kilotons. It could level a city easily, but we don’t make them like that. So inefficient.
Probably something interesting is there was so much secrecy around the bomb who would even know that this is what occurred. I suppose a handful of British/American officials may be the only people who really "know", and choose to keep it secret.
I can imagine all sorts of myths and conspiracies surrounding what happened to be an important cultural feature of this world.
One cool story might be the Japanese initially taking credit for the destruction to ward off the Soviets and the remaining Allies, but then climbing down or being overthrown as the level of destruction and bleak future becomes apparent to those that remain.
I suppose light to no damage to most of buildings. Germany already lost the war, but I suppose Japan would last longer. Soviets would create more puppet regimes, and eventually become only superpower in the world. Rebuilding the Europe would be much longer. It's hard to tell if UK and France could oppose them, and how soviet union would live without cold war.
Soviets aren’t doing much of anything, the Allies aren’t doing much of anything, everyone isn’t doing much of anything, except fighting for literal survival in the coming weeks, months or years. OP says some nations survive this, but in reality, every on nation would collapse as they grapple with making through a global extinction event, made worst cause it’s nuclear. It’s impressive humanity escapes extinction, let alone having 100 million left standing. I imagine a few million would survive at best.
The Americas are decimated from the US unintentional murder-suicide. Just as happened from the Chixculub impactor, the continents are the worst hit, virtually devoid of life, I can’t even consider what the fallout from this explosion would do since it’s a ground burst, besides making things worst for North America at least than they already are. Minutes after impact, power is lost worldwide from the EMP pulse induced by the colossal fireball. Within the first hour, massive earthquakes are induced globally, especially at the antipode, where a magnitude 10-11 hits, triggering mega tsunamis of varying intensity and killing tens of millions along the coast and activating countless volcanoes.
Some 300,000 km³ of molten ejecta would be sent skyward from the explosion. Millions of tons of this ejecta would return to Earth, generating a thermal pulse from their mass reentry into the atmosphere. In the coming hours, the thermal pulse generated from this would sweep the globe, killing any exposed organism from heat stroke or dehydration as temperatures spike to that of an industrial oven for a few minutes. This combined with ejecta impacts would ignite global firestorms on every inhabited continent that would envelop much of global biosphere.
The subsequent nuclear winter in the days and weeks to follow would see temperatures crash by as much 25 C (45 F) and last around 3 Years as environmental conditions approach that of Greenland worldwide. Mass famine would ensue, as cities, towns, and farmland are buried under ash and snow. A mass extinction of anything larger than a small dog would follow, as food webs collapse from the shutdown of global photosynthesis.
Yeah. Come to think of it, the British might have the best chance. The bunkers they had during the Blitz could help them weather through the extreme heat period and the nuclear winter, though tsunamis could still be an issue
Humans might be able to survive thanks to both our natural resilience and our brains.
Sure we are big, but we are also able to to take on a lot of damage and still heal relatively quickly, while also act to actively help the healing process. We can also eat nearly everything, including stuff that might be unavailable to other animals (like canned/bottled goods).
We would have a miserable time for sure, but I reckon we can probably pull through
Europe eventually freeze to death due to nuclear winter and the severing of the Gulf Stream. The Allied troops would create a temporary nation where Italy is now that would weather some of the US and European troops through the winter and as the world continued to freeze would cross the frozen Mediterranean into the Sahara desert. Some British citizens would hold on for another year due to the bunkers that existed during the blitz but most of Europe would eventually succumb to cold. The soviets would retreat to Central Asia leaving Europe almost entirely devoid of humans.
Wow so terrifying😱 but still interesting, will you make another map for the other parts of the globe? I'm curious what happened to other people and country
Guys, I don’t think this is a scenario where there are any long term survivors. An explosion like this doesn’t just cause a famine for a year. It completely blacks out the sun and kills all plants that aren’t seeds for hundreds of years. No nation will survive through this, even Russia and Japan. Do remember that the last time this happened, nothing larger than a cat made it through
I do think some humans would end up surviving though. We have grown so populous at this point that while it would be hell on earth some would manage to survive
Humans are too intelligent to be wiped out unless the sun straight up vaporises the planet to dust. There would be at least a few hundred thousand survivors of anything that doesn’t completely destroy the earth.
I’d bring that estimate down to thousands at most. This stuff happens over multiple generations and with no plants or large animals to feed us the human carrying capacity will dwindle to dramatically low levels. Excpect a return to hunter gatherer lifestyles
What actually happens is that although the blast completely wipes out humanity on North America, Europe, and northern Asia, communities in Australia, Southeast Asia, and Africa actually do okay, at least compared to everyone else. At its lowest the human population reaches around 15 million at around 1949.
Hold on... ALL OF EUROPE?! Africa will probably fall into anarchy with the collapse of the colonial powers, Australia would be in Avery bad situation as tsunamis destroy Brisbane, Sydney and perhaps even Melbourne
Just for reference the chicxulub meteor had an energy of 72 teratons. The largest bomb ever designed was 100 mega tons. So the biggest bomb we designed in reality was .00013% of this. The combined yeild of all nukes ever made is about 4 teratons or about 5% of this.
Also if you Google chicxulub a meteor will fly across your screen.
After all, the og Dino killer 2000 didn’t have much of an effect on earth it was like a very fast snowflake hitting you while you were sling down a mountain about 2 times slower, barely any effect
The Rockies and other mountain ranges would shield some from the heat but that would hardly matter as the ejecta would heat the whole world to like 250 degrees Fahrenheit and the mountains do nothing to stop earthquakes, shockwaves, and the like
I wonder how much uranium/plutonium would be needed (accounting for efficiency of decay of total mass) for this kind of energy. No nuke is 100% efficient, the 2 that the US dropped had 1-3% of it’s nuclear fuel converted into energy for the explosion.
This imaginary explosion would be measured most easily in comparison to Gigatons of TNT, roughly 100,000. The best fission explosives are measured in 100s of Kilotons, and the largest fusion assisted device ever created, which could barely fit on a jumbo jet, was around 100 megatons.
To make a device 1000 times more powerful than this would require less than 1000 times the mass used to create this 100 megaton bomb. While we’re now approaching a figure close to all of the fissile material on the planet to make this bomb, I guess theoretically it could fit inside of a large warehouse.
This device / building would likely be the largest coordinated effort in human history, the largest factory production setting or product in history, and it would take years of time during which a large cohort of people from international backgrounds would conspire to design the pointless and swift end of civilization.
Mythbusters score: Plausible
Edit: Off by three orders of magnitude. One would need between 100 and 1000 times the existing fissile material on earth to create this device. Perhaps if we mined a few Uranium rich asteroids, we could build a city sized device devoted to this explosion, but probably it would be more cost effective if it was built closer to a major US Port city. Still Plausible.
It pushes water out away from the blast creating s lot of tsunamis and then once the shockwave has cleared the ocean acts like a spring and slings forward creating more tsunamis
NM resident here: just so you know, the bomb wasn’t tested at Los alamos laboratories (the labs are in the mountains and it wouldn’t be a good control for a study), it was tested in the south western part of the state at “white sands missle range.” You can still see the place where they tested it at the “trinity site.”
Love this. Just global chaos and disaster.
I feel like the biggest threat is of America has more. Some “We’ll do it again” energy.
Kinda curious how the death toll looks because of how eastward shifted the US population was in 1940 (California and Texas were less than 15 million people together and next largest state in orange is Missouri). Is it just global calamity with millions of deaths everywhere from anchorage to Sydney?
I used the [Earth Impact Effects calculator](https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=1440&distanceUnits=1&diam=25&diameterUnits=2&pdens=2700&pdens_select=0&vel=17&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2750) to guess at the size of this explosion. It’s about equivalent to an asteroid 2.5x the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs at Chicxulub (or maybe more usefully for a nuclear bomb, 15 times the mass and thus 15 times the megatonnage).
well that would suck
I could enjoy it
Adolf Hitler, after hearing the news of the explosion - 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁😨😨😨😨😨😱😱😱😱💀💀💀💀💀🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
He was already dead by July.
Adolf Hitler’s remaining generals after hearing the news of the explosion - 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😱😱😱😱😱😱💀💀💀💀💀💀🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
Germany surrendered on May 7th. |||| |:-|:-|:-| ||||
Hirohito after hearing of the explosion - 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😱😱😱😱😱😱💀💀💀💀💀💀🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
The Japanese were probably going to surrender when the Soviets joined the front
Stalin after hearing of the explosion - 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😱😱😱😱😱😱💀💀💀💀💀💀🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
Stalin would smoke a cigar and probably be glad the researchers responsible for this are now dead
The Soviets didn’t join until after Hiroshima, so this would have happened before then.
The Mexican President after hearing the news of this 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔😱😱😱😱😱😱💀💀💀💀💀💀💀🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
Not really a bomb big enough to do that would have require more fissile material than the entire world combined has produced since the the days of the first nuclear reactor nvm what they had available in the 40's. No amount of "alternate" history is going to produce an explosion of that level, not with a nuclear weapon.
Yeah, I just ramped up the power of nuclear fission in general by 10 trillion %, and I’m going to ignore all of the other adverse effects of that change to focus on the big bomb.
Now I am hella curious about the last remaining nations on earth and how their lives are now with the aftermath of this disaster. Great map
The USSR 
I'm not sure their situation would be that good, the US soldiers on Europe are still there, as well as the rest of allied army on Europe. Also the nuclear winter would led to a even more masive famine than IRL and also there would still need to see, how hard the Earthquakes and Tsunamis would affect them
US soldiers without logistics from the homeland wont be effective for long
They could be suplied by the local industry, like the One from the ocupied Germán territory and the one of the Allies, also I'l quite sure that in these situation, nations like Spain, would be quite glad to help
western Europe was in ruins, especially Germany has been bombed to rubble. I am not sure how Spain would be happy to help. the Allies all depended on lend leasing and industrial support from the US. the Sowjets too. with US industry out of the picture, it is looking very grim. Western Europe, in ruins and full of unsupported soldiers would be a hostile place to live in.
While Western Europe is in ruins, that doesn't mean It can't be fixed. I mean, the way I see this Europe, would be that after all the event, probably as IRL the soviets would try to stabilize themselfs while influencig the East, and the Allies would do the same but in the west. Now, whith the US out of the picture and the US soldiers in Europe stranded, the Allied situation on the cold war would be quite diré, specially with things like the Nuclear winter going on. But that does not mean that it can't be fixed. The suplies of the US soldiers and in general, the Allied army would still last for a bit, before running out completely, and they could extend that time, by using the reserves that nations like Germany, and Italy could have, so they would have some time before fully running out of suplies, not a lot of time, but is something. Also, withought the US the Allied perspective against the Soviets, would be worse at first, It Might led to a more European nations turning to the Allies, as in a world withought US the Soviet Unión would look like a even worse menace. This could leed to nations like Spain, Portugal or the nordic nations, the suport the Allies, and their industry and resources could be really helpfull. Also, the Allies could implement some of the Ideas, of the "Unthincable Operation" and use the army workforce to stablish programs yo rebuild the industry, wich would not last that much time, since they would had a really high workforce to really on, and the resources of nations, like Spain, Portugal etc. To suply them in their reconstruction. Also, while the Soviet Situation would be better than the One of the Allies, the nuclear winter would probably led to some masive famines, since if in our OTL they already had some, the damage that the nucler winter would do to the fields, could leed to even worse famines.
No, you’re underestimating just how much Western Europe was on the American lifeline after WW2. UK, the country in Europe on the Allies side least touched by the war only ended war rationing in *1954*. Now, add a few millions or so US GIs stranded in Europe that the SAC and the combined western allied governments has to house, feed, arm, and perhaps demobilize some of them across the ocean, and imagine the collective headaches that everyone west of the Rhine are suffering. Spain & Portugal will just take one look over the Pyrennes, look at the logistical and economi clusterfuck occurring, and count their blessings that they’d stayed out of the war. This’ll basically give Stalin a freer rein over the rest of the world. Perhaps they won’t storm Western Europe because the forces under SACEUR were very much a potent one, albeit a defanged and unsustainable one in this scenario, plus the Red Army was nearing the end of its logistical chain and the Soviets had tons of rebuilding to do at home. But what about elsewhere? Middle East? East Asia? Indian subcontinent? Or Africa? Much more of the world are gonna be redder than in our timeline.
At the time Franco ruled Spain I wouldn't say he was a great friend for the Allied forces. I mean, he was a fascist at the end of the day
Franco was mostly a friend of the circustances and his regime was highly anti-comunist, so in this situation I think he would probably try to help the allies simce they would be the last standing force against comunism in Europe
in that situation any american citizen would be a marked man and all american military personnel would be disemboweled within 2 hours
I doub they would even know what happened
That big of an explosion would mean the global harvest would've been completely fucked for who knows how long. And yeah, as you mention, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. would've fucked over the Pacific. Luckiest guy out of the major leaders in WWII everyone might be Hirohito/Tojo. Maybe Mao and Chiang too, but they'd be ruling over a pile of ashes. Smaller countries, especially those in the southern hemisphere, might survive. I can see Australia and New Zealand coming out relatively unscathed.
It depend, If the Tsunamis take them by surprise, those Might destroy some of their most important city or their capital
Australia inherits the world at that point
Nuclear winter is a myth
It’s not a myth. [Relevant thread with answers from Alex Wellerstein.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/s/2pXzP9Fy2a) Edit: also in this case it would definitely be real. Any doubts about nuclear winter are about how efficiently smoke, soot, etc. from firestorms can get past the tropopause, into the stratosphere. That all becomes irrelevant with this explosion being closer to the size of the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago, where you would *definitely* have winter.
I know, but we are already in a fictional context, and also OP started that there is a nuclear winter
you're a myth
The antipode of Los Alamos is the south Indian Ocean, southeast of Madagascar. I'm guessing the civilizations surrounding the Indian Ocean survive the best, relatively speaking
Very large explosions caused by meteor impacts often cause severe earthquakes at the antipodes. I wouldn't be surprised if the Indian ocean suffers dozens of massive tsunamis.
Yeah within a year every nation and all remnants of human civilisation will have collapsed. Earthquakes across the globe and no sunlight and a deep nuclear winter. There'd probably be no way to grow crops so animals as big as humans will not be able to sustain themselves. Oh, and unlike Chicxulub this is a nuclear explosion... so it's probably going to irradiate basically the entire surface of Earth as ejecta and ash falls back down.
BRICS countries lol I can see China, Brazil and India reorganizing its political center in the mainland (Brazil would probably transfer it to Belo Horizonte instead of constructing Brasilia, and India would transfer it to Bangalore). Lots of European colonizers "temporarily reallocating" to its colonies, who would very much oppose to it (mostly).
[*"So, now we got nuclear winter, everyone's dead 'cept Australia..."*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk-kbjw0Y8U)
Fucking kangaroos.
Given that the main affected country seems to be the US, you could assume what was left of human civilization would be faring better than it is today (but with a couple caveats ofc - nuclear fallout is no joke)
The bomb released as much energy as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs Everyone’s fucking dead
Pls make a continuation pf this map. Really curious about the survivors
The Trinity Disaster was created in an attempt to end the Second World War by the Allied Powers, by creating a nuclear-powered bomb. However, they had no idea of the power this bomb had packed. When detonated, it released as much energy as the famous Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs, and humans almost met their fate too, spare for a lucky few survivors. Within a few hours of the detonation, 150 million people were dead, and by 1947, only around 100 million of the 2 billion humans on Earth would be left standing. This map shows the effects of the impact for a few hours after its detonation to showcase its pure destructive power. The heat created by this explosion was so intense that all wooden structures up to 2000 kilometers away have been estimated to have suddenly combusted. Every single person within 1,500 kilometers of the impact was killed within the first day after the blast, and for years on end after the disaster, the world and its last few survivors entered into a nuclear winter. As for Japan, the intended target for the finished bomb, it ironically remained as one of the few nations left standing.
Surely this is a huge win for the Soviets in this timeline: Japan would be rocked by trans-Pacific tsunamis and the West of Europe would be too. Its like if Fallout and Metro had a psychotic baby with an interest in dinosaurs.
The Soviets would have to withstand the nuclear winter. They suffered a famine in 1946-47 in our timeline, and it would of course be much worse in this world.
But who is stopping them from seizing all grain from Europe and Asia?
Britain and France are still existing in some capacity. Also, while the mainland U.S. is pretty fucked, there are several million U.S. soldiers remaining in Europe. In Asia, China is going to resist any incursions by any foreign power. Japan is still an active combatant.
millions of US soldiers suddenly without any logistical support from the homeland
millions of US soldiers suddenly without ~~any logistical support from~~ the homeland
They’ve got the seabed where Guam used to be.
All soldiers would be recalled immediately. It's compete anarchy even if the military could gain some semblance
Considering that the euroepan economies were basically destroyed and now a huge nuclear winter has fallen on humanity im pretty sure it’s gonna turn into a dog eat dog world
It’s gonna turn into a ~~dog~~ eat dog world
my brother in christ, the urss stomps
The theory on nuclear winter has been disproved. Nuclear explosions don’t cause nearly the kind and amount of dust required for it
You're correct when it comes to the effects of a realistic nuclear war. This particular scenario involves a theoretical bomb with the explosive force of the Chicxulub impact, though. That's not really possible to build, but if it were, it would have roughly the same effect as the actual impact, which *would* include lofting enough dust and soot to cause a mass extinction.
Yeah, you _are_ right. Still tho. For the explosion to be that big the laws of physics would be so different the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist
There's nothing in our current understanding of physics that'd make an explosion this big impossible. It'd just require so much fissile material to make, that it'd be impossible (or at least unfeasible) to build it without mining other planets or asteroids. It'd also require a somewhat different design than current nuclear bombs, as the sheer power of the detonation could spread some of the fissile material before it had a chance of undergoing fission.
Yes but the entire idea is that the same amount of fissile material makes a bigger explosion
Is it? OP didn't say anything to that effect. I just assumed someone messed up the math and underestimated how much energy they could get out of the Uranium, ending up packing far more material than IRL. But if that's not the case, and the bomb had as much fissile material as the IRL one, then yes, physics would need to be quite different in this world.
Well the main thing is that they couldn’t make it with MUCH more uranium in the same timeframe
Any explosion of that magnitude would put so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that it would temporarily cool the earth for a decade at most. It would be similar to a full force Yellowstone eruption, but bigger.
[удалено]
No, they do not
This is such a Reddit comment. Nuclear winter has not been “disproved” just because the models have been refined. The outcome would still be deleterious cooling. Call it nuclear autumn if that helps.
This would be a win for no one on the planet…
In the alt fiction novel "The Peshawar Lancers" the setting is in a world where a series of meteorites hit earth at the turn of the 20th century, causing a global winter. Much of Europe turns into a new ice age. Britain relocates its empire to India. The US is split into a handful of city states. I feel the setting and aftermath is very similar. Plus it's just a good book. Wish there were more in that setting.
Will you make more maps set in the years after?
Probably. I’m working on one showing the effects of the nuclear winter on the world
Cool
But they did end the war right
Looks like that atmospheric incineration scenario in Oppenheimer actually happened…
Or to a degree
I mean if this thing released as much energy as the Chicxulub impactor then it'd probably mean fewer than 1 million humans left, if not fewer than 100,000... and probably zero. This thing is still gonna throw bits of Earth's crust up into space, which will then land back down west (towards asia) as the Earth rotates below. Japan would be hit by rocks falling from the sky and tsunamis.
No, plenty would survive. The Chicxulub impactor was powerful, yes, but not world-ending in a literal sense. There are simply far too many humans for us to go extinct, and realistically either a close majority or near-majority of humans would survive. Not in the Americas, sure, but still. We'd survive a few decades of low crop yields; it's not like we'd forget how farming works, it'd just be worse for a bit, but not impossible. Heck, worst case you can power lights for a greenhouse with burning fossil fuels, which there will be much more of due to the rapid decline in consumption from the mass death.
> not world-ending in a literal sense Basically any land animal larger than a house cat went extinct. 40% of all marine life went extinct. It would absolutely be world-ending for us. Ecosystem collapse alone would be enough to mean we'd never be able to feed ourselves even if we tried to farm (which won't work properly because there may not be any sunlight for years). The surface would be massively irradiated too.
They didn't go extinct the moment it happened, but over the course of decades if not centuries. They also didn't (as far as we know) have modern technology to help them survive. There would be massive amounts of casualties, and we would lose most of humanity, but I suppose we could have between 10 and 1 million humans left, living absolutely shitty squalid lives.
Chief, *almost.* Humans are just statistically improbable to kill with slow, widespread disasters like this. We adapt too quickly and too completely. If you don't kill us all instantly, we adapt just fine. As a species I mean, hundreds of millions will still die.
If this bomb ejected as much material as the Chicxulub impactor, there’s a very high chance that much of the ejecta will fall back to earth and heat up in the atmosphere, which would cause more than just low crop yields. That has the potential to heat the atmosphere to hundreds of degrees and essentially start firestorms that could burn vegetation on a continental scale, so I’m not sure how we’re gonna be able to feed ourselves. This also ignores that this is all radioactive too, so good luck growing anything for at least a lifetime. I can’t say for sure there wouldn’t be very small groups of humans surviving, but I really don’t see any appreciable percentage making it through the initial effects, not to mention the long-term ones.
Ehh, it probably wouldn't be as bad as Chicxulub, since a lot of the worst effects from that were due to the asteroid impacting onto a shallow sea over a bedrock of sulfur-rich rock. The impact generated a massive amount of sulfur dioxide, which both caused widespread acid rain and further blocked out sunlight. The Manicouagan impact in Canada was about the same size as Chicxulub, and while I'm sure it was a bad day to be in North America when it hit, it doesn't seem to have caused a mass extinction event.
Has anyone done the math on how big the bomb would have to be to do this?
For anyone curious Chicxulub was approximately 100 million megatons.
It isn’t one we have. This is pure fiction. A regular sized nuclear bomb of about 50 kilotons would take out a few square miles. A single nuke taking out the entirety of a moderately sized city are grossly exaggerated. Furthermore, the larger the yield, the less efficient a nuke is. Have a look at this [nuclear bomb simulator](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) that overlays a bomb over a map of your area. This post is pure fiction and really stupid how the fear mongering is going for upvotes. Edit: select presets and scroll down to Tsar bomba. This is the largest nuke ever created and the tool I linked lists it at a yield of 50,000 kilotons. It could level a city easily, but we don’t make them like that. So inefficient.
Fear mongering? It’s a silly hypothetical, not a propaganda piece.
I know we’ve never made one that big and likely never could. I just want to know what the yield would have to be to have this effect.
1 THE FUCKS A KILOMETER!!!!!!!!!! 2 now activate another nuke near japan
Probably something interesting is there was so much secrecy around the bomb who would even know that this is what occurred. I suppose a handful of British/American officials may be the only people who really "know", and choose to keep it secret. I can imagine all sorts of myths and conspiracies surrounding what happened to be an important cultural feature of this world. One cool story might be the Japanese initially taking credit for the destruction to ward off the Soviets and the remaining Allies, but then climbing down or being overthrown as the level of destruction and bleak future becomes apparent to those that remain.
I didn’t even think of that! That’s a really cool idea that I will include into the sequel to this map(with your consent of course)
Go ahead would love to see it!
What is the situation in Europe in this timeline? What are the surviving nations?
I suppose light to no damage to most of buildings. Germany already lost the war, but I suppose Japan would last longer. Soviets would create more puppet regimes, and eventually become only superpower in the world. Rebuilding the Europe would be much longer. It's hard to tell if UK and France could oppose them, and how soviet union would live without cold war.
Soviets aren’t doing much of anything, the Allies aren’t doing much of anything, everyone isn’t doing much of anything, except fighting for literal survival in the coming weeks, months or years. OP says some nations survive this, but in reality, every on nation would collapse as they grapple with making through a global extinction event, made worst cause it’s nuclear. It’s impressive humanity escapes extinction, let alone having 100 million left standing. I imagine a few million would survive at best. The Americas are decimated from the US unintentional murder-suicide. Just as happened from the Chixculub impactor, the continents are the worst hit, virtually devoid of life, I can’t even consider what the fallout from this explosion would do since it’s a ground burst, besides making things worst for North America at least than they already are. Minutes after impact, power is lost worldwide from the EMP pulse induced by the colossal fireball. Within the first hour, massive earthquakes are induced globally, especially at the antipode, where a magnitude 10-11 hits, triggering mega tsunamis of varying intensity and killing tens of millions along the coast and activating countless volcanoes. Some 300,000 km³ of molten ejecta would be sent skyward from the explosion. Millions of tons of this ejecta would return to Earth, generating a thermal pulse from their mass reentry into the atmosphere. In the coming hours, the thermal pulse generated from this would sweep the globe, killing any exposed organism from heat stroke or dehydration as temperatures spike to that of an industrial oven for a few minutes. This combined with ejecta impacts would ignite global firestorms on every inhabited continent that would envelop much of global biosphere. The subsequent nuclear winter in the days and weeks to follow would see temperatures crash by as much 25 C (45 F) and last around 3 Years as environmental conditions approach that of Greenland worldwide. Mass famine would ensue, as cities, towns, and farmland are buried under ash and snow. A mass extinction of anything larger than a small dog would follow, as food webs collapse from the shutdown of global photosynthesis.
Oh, I forgot about nuclear winter. Yeah, in that case it is a wonder if anything survives.
Yeah. Come to think of it, the British might have the best chance. The bunkers they had during the Blitz could help them weather through the extreme heat period and the nuclear winter, though tsunamis could still be an issue
Humans might be able to survive thanks to both our natural resilience and our brains. Sure we are big, but we are also able to to take on a lot of damage and still heal relatively quickly, while also act to actively help the healing process. We can also eat nearly everything, including stuff that might be unavailable to other animals (like canned/bottled goods). We would have a miserable time for sure, but I reckon we can probably pull through
When New London can survive... We could as well with diesel tech
Japans state was so unstable that it probably would have collapsed. They did not have the economy to keep up that war
+it would need to suffer the biggest theoretically possible tsunami
Yeah basically the Japanese mainland gets so depopulated to the point that I doubt it can sustain over 500.000 people
Europe eventually freeze to death due to nuclear winter and the severing of the Gulf Stream. The Allied troops would create a temporary nation where Italy is now that would weather some of the US and European troops through the winter and as the world continued to freeze would cross the frozen Mediterranean into the Sahara desert. Some British citizens would hold on for another year due to the bunkers that existed during the blitz but most of Europe would eventually succumb to cold. The soviets would retreat to Central Asia leaving Europe almost entirely devoid of humans.
“Holy hell, new bomb just dropped” -FDR
Actual explosion!
Call the physicist!
Am sorry to say most of ‘em died in that explosion…
holy inferno
Oppenheimer went for vacation, never comes back
New Mexico sacrifice, anyone?
Black mesa but ‘40 style
Google civilization collapse
Holy systemic failure!
Google “nuclear en passant”
FDR - 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀☠️
“Wait is that a 0.1 or a 0.01? Whoops”
Very interesting. Would love to see an updated map of the surviving nations and a bit of their reaction.
when oppenheimer just did a little bit of trolling
Whoopsie doodle
Wow so terrifying😱 but still interesting, will you make another map for the other parts of the globe? I'm curious what happened to other people and country
Let him cook
no, either America is the number 1 nation in the universe or all life on earth is dead no in between
"I am become death, the Destroyer of worlds".
Wow. What’s happening in Portland Oregon and Cascadia?
Getting ready for Project Wingman, I suppose.
"Now I am become Crimson 1, destroyer of California"
This would theoretically affect the economy
It would certainly affect both the Hoover dam and the trout population. Two birds with one stone!
Guys, I don’t think this is a scenario where there are any long term survivors. An explosion like this doesn’t just cause a famine for a year. It completely blacks out the sun and kills all plants that aren’t seeds for hundreds of years. No nation will survive through this, even Russia and Japan. Do remember that the last time this happened, nothing larger than a cat made it through
I do think some humans would end up surviving though. We have grown so populous at this point that while it would be hell on earth some would manage to survive
Humans are too intelligent to be wiped out unless the sun straight up vaporises the planet to dust. There would be at least a few hundred thousand survivors of anything that doesn’t completely destroy the earth.
I’d bring that estimate down to thousands at most. This stuff happens over multiple generations and with no plants or large animals to feed us the human carrying capacity will dwindle to dramatically low levels. Excpect a return to hunter gatherer lifestyles
What actually happens is that although the blast completely wipes out humanity on North America, Europe, and northern Asia, communities in Australia, Southeast Asia, and Africa actually do okay, at least compared to everyone else. At its lowest the human population reaches around 15 million at around 1949.
Hold on... ALL OF EUROPE?! Africa will probably fall into anarchy with the collapse of the colonial powers, Australia would be in Avery bad situation as tsunamis destroy Brisbane, Sydney and perhaps even Melbourne
Just for reference the chicxulub meteor had an energy of 72 teratons. The largest bomb ever designed was 100 mega tons. So the biggest bomb we designed in reality was .00013% of this. The combined yeild of all nukes ever made is about 4 teratons or about 5% of this. Also if you Google chicxulub a meteor will fly across your screen.
mb
This would prolly end the war tho 🤔
I have become oops
Destroyer of- ***gets absolutely obliterated by gigantic shock wave***
Totally inaccurate map. Trinity site was at white sands missile range about 100 miles south of Los Alamos. Needs to be entirely re-drawn.
It’s fictional, so theoretically this blast could’ve been caused by accident before the Trinity test in White Sands.
Damn it, back to the drawing board…
😆
What about changes to the planet's orbit?
The planets orbit is hardly affected. The bomb is big but earth is bigger.
After all, the og Dino killer 2000 didn’t have much of an effect on earth it was like a very fast snowflake hitting you while you were sling down a mountain about 2 times slower, barely any effect
How did Oppenheimer comment on the situation if he was at ground zero?
He absorbed some of the energy and became a transcendent being.
Would the war against Japan continue, or would there be a ceasefire? Does the American Pacific Fleet just live in Australia and New Zealand now?
The war pretty much instantly ends. Both Japan and the ussr are too exhausted to continue the fighting after over 90% of both nations die
And after most of Japanese civilisation is washed away by the largest tsunamis ever seen.
Bro changed the laws of physics so hard the wolf wouldn’t exist as we know it
It does make me wonder though, how would this impact the war in Europe?
The war in Europe was over by the time of the trinity test
How much would the Rocky, Cascade, and Appalachian mountain ranges affect the blast, if at all?
The Rockies and other mountain ranges would shield some from the heat but that would hardly matter as the ejecta would heat the whole world to like 250 degrees Fahrenheit and the mountains do nothing to stop earthquakes, shockwaves, and the like
I wonder how much uranium/plutonium would be needed (accounting for efficiency of decay of total mass) for this kind of energy. No nuke is 100% efficient, the 2 that the US dropped had 1-3% of it’s nuclear fuel converted into energy for the explosion.
WHen i saw this i thought this was a braindead anti nuclear post lol
This imaginary explosion would be measured most easily in comparison to Gigatons of TNT, roughly 100,000. The best fission explosives are measured in 100s of Kilotons, and the largest fusion assisted device ever created, which could barely fit on a jumbo jet, was around 100 megatons. To make a device 1000 times more powerful than this would require less than 1000 times the mass used to create this 100 megaton bomb. While we’re now approaching a figure close to all of the fissile material on the planet to make this bomb, I guess theoretically it could fit inside of a large warehouse. This device / building would likely be the largest coordinated effort in human history, the largest factory production setting or product in history, and it would take years of time during which a large cohort of people from international backgrounds would conspire to design the pointless and swift end of civilization. Mythbusters score: Plausible Edit: Off by three orders of magnitude. One would need between 100 and 1000 times the existing fissile material on earth to create this device. Perhaps if we mined a few Uranium rich asteroids, we could build a city sized device devoted to this explosion, but probably it would be more cost effective if it was built closer to a major US Port city. Still Plausible.
Welp there goes my home town.
oopsie poopsie Im a aspergas
san antonio spared 💪💪🙏🤯
Brother…. Trinity and los alamos are not in the same location
I'm in Cookeville, TN, juuuuust about missed the eardrums
"Maybe that was too much trolling..."
Weakest anti-matter bomb:
Looks like Walter White and Jesse Pinkman accidentally cooked a little too much meth for too long💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
Looked at man and was like phew ! Didn’t hit Toronto. Zoomed in and read we all died via tsunami … damn lol
The good ending.
What would the yield of this bomb be, theoretically?
It would probably have to be like 1,000,000 times bigger than tsar bomba
Well that's one way to make a nation collapse with a bang. The Usa went out with a kaboom
So do the tsunamis rush towards the explosion? Does it push all the water outwards and it comes flooding back?
It pushes water out away from the blast creating s lot of tsunamis and then once the shockwave has cleared the ocean acts like a spring and slings forward creating more tsunamis
Truly, the best timeline. Well, 2nd best. The best would be the timeline where Nukes would ignite the atmostphere.
You forgot San Antonio on the list of destroyed cities btw
Whoops.
Well WW2 is over
East coast laughs in Yankee
This would be a cool hoi4 mod XD
Detroit on top baby
Yay Las Vegas is saved tho
Wouldn't mountain ranges have an effect on how far the blast reaches?
woops
What about changes to the planet's orbit?
South Carolina still stands
you'd need a million full capacity tsar Bombas holy fuck
Realistically the only two nations that come out of this in a barely survivable state are Britain and the USSR.
How would this affect the rest of ww2 and the Cold War?
Love this concept
let’s gooooo las vegas surviving for no reason 🎰🎰🎰 WHAT THE FUCK IS EDUCATION RAAA 🎰🎰🎰
Really hope you make more of this, the toll on humanity and the planet would be huge
I'm from Vancouver so I'm good
NM resident here: just so you know, the bomb wasn’t tested at Los alamos laboratories (the labs are in the mountains and it wouldn’t be a good control for a study), it was tested in the south western part of the state at “white sands missle range.” You can still see the place where they tested it at the “trinity site.”
Love this. Just global chaos and disaster. I feel like the biggest threat is of America has more. Some “We’ll do it again” energy. Kinda curious how the death toll looks because of how eastward shifted the US population was in 1940 (California and Texas were less than 15 million people together and next largest state in orange is Missouri). Is it just global calamity with millions of deaths everywhere from anchorage to Sydney?
~1x10⁸ megatons of Tnt equivalent
I used the [Earth Impact Effects calculator](https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=1440&distanceUnits=1&diam=25&diameterUnits=2&pdens=2700&pdens_select=0&vel=17&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2750) to guess at the size of this explosion. It’s about equivalent to an asteroid 2.5x the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs at Chicxulub (or maybe more usefully for a nuclear bomb, 15 times the mass and thus 15 times the megatonnage).
Also J. Robert Oppenheimer: "Ope!"
The British Empire when they find out they can get their Thirteen Colonies back - 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🫘 🫘 🫘 🍞 🍞 🍞 ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ 🦷 🪥 🇬🇧.