Fallout's Government Apparently Stupid

[charwo]

Actually, I've read the same reports, in summary. It breaks down like this: Most everything we know about the after effects of nuclear war are false, media induced apathies. They don't reflect the reality at all. The Day After comes closest, but the notion of Fallout contaminating the farmlands and nuclear winter of any but the mildest kind (three years of a 10 Celsius, or a repeat of Krakatoa's Years without Summer) are bunk. And we actually confirmed this with the Kuwait Oil Fires of 1991. Scaremongers abound, and justify their panic causing in the name of we can't take chances.

 

Here is the breakdown:

 

10 % of the USSR's population would die from nuclear bombings and aftereffects due to the highly dispersed nature of Russia's urban placement and lack of really high density cities outside of Moscow. Even in Moscow, 80% pf the city would survive if the fire crews did their work properly (which they would)

 

10% of the US population would die from the same exchange in terms of direct bombing deaths, with a grand total of 30% with bomb and radiation. As Civil Defense points outs, the greatest threat of nuclear war are not the nukes, but the collapse of trade and social order. This strike analysis had stuff for Europe in the broadest terms, and assumes a full launch with every target being hit. There is no existential threat to human life or civilization in nuclear war. Bio Warfare is a lot scarier, but it takes a lot longer, and the longer the Apocalypse takes, the more likely a counter response can null it.

 

This is why in actual government policy, the nuclear weapon exists solely to prevent its use. MAD was never on the table for anyone as a first resort of war. And it's not too much of a stretch to say that even tac nukes wouldn't cause strategic nuclear strikes.

 

It's these game theories that lead me to say Cheng was a monster. There is always rationale for going to war, but there is never a rational goal in a full nuclear strike with the assurance of retaliation. Anyone who launches missiles at his foe when his foe has conquered his capital is an Omnicidal Maniac full stop.

[TrickyVein]

No, we can't take chances. And today, "we" is a growing number of nations whose politics with one another are not anything like MAD and what existed between the US and the Soviets who prevented using nukes for the entirety of the cold war. Public opinion should not shift from where it is now on using nukes (which is never) merely because they're not 'as bad' as we may believe - which we can only predict and still isn't close to being as rosy as you describe. The Kuwait oil fires are not analogous, because explosions, unlike fires, launch heavy particulates into the air from the ground, exactly like volcanic eruptions. Krakatoa was only one volcano which you correctly point out resulted in massive climate change across a wide regional area in a very short amount of time and for years afterwards. You do not mention the loss of ozone and increase of harmful UV radiation with the delivery of tonnage under discussion, and reports of the dispersal of fallout from operation castle don't really do much to change the expectation that widespread contamination would reduce usable cropland.

 

It seems to me you're putting forth estimates and projections, but the numbers are only as good as the science on which they're based. It is incomplete.

 

In any case, we can continue this fascination with the macabre and argue just how bad doomsday really would be, but in the end society does collapse. That's what matters ultimately, for Fallout's timeline anyway.

[charwo]

Oh I'm not saying it's ok to use nukes. Hell no. What I'm saying is that no one can win nuclear war, but we'll survive it if it comes.

[Moraelin]

Well, I wasn't even arguing how bad it would be, but just that the Fallout (and generally post-apocalyptic fantasy) idea of having so few survivors that you can just find old cans of food around after 200+ years is thoroughly bunk. Supermarkets have stocks that can be measured in days, or a week tops. And whether the civilization collapses or not, the survivors WILL eat that stuff first, until the infrastructure is restored. (Or maybe it doesn't fast enough to save them.)

 

I don't even have to argue exactly how bad the apocalypse would be, because it doesn't matter. Lots of survivors or few, collapse of social order or not, they still won't let those supplies go to waste for some nerd's fantasy 200 years later. Whether they're rioting and looting it, or form an orderly and organized system of rationing the supplies, they WILL use that stuff, because it's that or starving to death. And people tend to try to avoid the latter :P

 

Even if you managed to nuke 90% of the population of a city, there's still too many people and too few supplies for any reasonable stretch of time.

 

But really, at the end of the day, at least for me it's not about nukes or whether it's ok to use them. I'm just pointing out the flaw in the Mad Max kind of fantasy scenario. You wouldn't be the overlord riding a buggy and shooting raiders and being idolized for being the great hero, but the guy who still has to earn a living some way or another. All the elements of stuff just lying around for you to take just wouldn't be there. If the great nuking was on October 23rd of 2077, then by November 2077 there'll be no more old stuff to loot in the cities, and by 2078 nor outside cities. Anything that's lying on some shelves will be owned by someone, same as in our time, and they'll want money for it. And if you just take it, a lot of people will want you dead or behind bars.

[TrickyVein]

Bethesda really screwed up by ignoring the timeline. Towns and settlements in the Core were organized. Raiders lived in the wastes. Survivors built new infrastructure and new societies. All of this was thrown out the door.

[phoneyLogic]

Actually, if you REALLY want to over-think the whole pre-war / post-war setup and how it would realistically go, consider this:

 

The worst estimates in the 60's-70's were that the nukes themselves would kill about 10% of the population, tops. When they told you to duck and cover, they really meant it. Unless you're near the epicentre, you can duck behind a wall. The huge damage would be to infrastructure. And that is what keeps us all alive. Without all those trucks and trains hauling in stuff, we wouldn't have cities this big. And what would happen next is millions of people still getting hungry, thousands of diabetics still needing their insulin, and a lot of people still needing water, and so on. The survivors would live a few days on whatever they can still find locally, then about another 80% of the population would starve to death before the infrastructure is anywhere near repaired. Well, some would shoot each other first, but same idea.

 

So, no, the bombs wouldn't kill 99.9% or more like in the games, and leave America with a cities of a dozen people living happily off looting supermarkets for the next 200+ years. It would leave it with a lot of people, and all supplies already looted clean before you were even BORN in the vault. You wouldn't be the great hero with an endless supply of ammo and food to be found all over the place, but the guy who better take a shovel and start working, because there's nothing more to loot. You wouldn't find even the Nuka Colas still in their crates, because someone would have drunk them even for their sugar content to delay starvation for a day or two.

 

So, yeah, better not overthink it.

 

The thing is, one just needs to know some basic facts and needs a little common sense to know that in fact this would be doomsday. I've seen a dozen posts like yours and I'd say in most countries in the world, it's widely known that the arsenal of the could war would be able to whipe out all higher life on earth. Well it's really hard to tell if it would be erased everywhere but at least in Europe, US and Russia. There would nothing left. And of cause, way longer than 200 years.

 

Do you know why they stopped those tests? I'm just courious. I think you don't and maybe you have your own theory. Well fact is, you still can measure them today, even singe test, world wide. I know, read it a dozen times, you probably think such a bomb is "clean". - Nope.

 

Ironically, in the 50 they downplayed the danger of such war in the US. The creators of the video game Fallout just took exactly the governments downplay and made a sarcastic fun of it. That's why the vault boy always smiles and thumbs up while he takes a nuke.

 

http://www.duckandcover.cx/gallery/albums/userpics/10095/dac.JPG

Just to be clear: This is not meant to be serious, it's a caricature of the bluntly naive duck and cover campaign.

 

It's very strange to see, that some apparently fall back into the very dated mindset.

 

 

Let me ask you a question:

If those nukes are so undangerous, shouldn't anybody have them?

Edited December 15, 2012 by tortured Tomato

[charwo]

The dangers of low level radiation (in this discussion, any fallout after two weeks, but there's a lot more) is virtually nil, and like nuclear winter, and catastrophic anthrogenic climate change are popular scare mongering, scientifically questionable at best.

 

Now, that's not to say the are dangerous, well except background radiation. But their potential for damage, including MAD, are crap.

 

Now heres the thing. Strategic nukes are plain and simple genocide machines they can't destroy Man nor Human civilization, but they can kill millions in a single strike. Thus they are more apt to be used by rouge elements.

 

They are not mythical. Their power is known, their effects can be messured and not even in the UK could they extinguish human life. And we know this because every government assessment, commie, free world, whatever came to the conclusion: no nation could win a nuclear war, but no nation was likely to go under from one.

 

A shi tsandwich, no matter how vile, is unlikely to kill you. The suffering is unfathomable, but you'll be surprised what you can live through.

[TrickyVein]

...nuclear winter, and catastrophic anthrogenic climate change are popular scare mongering, scientifically questionable at best.

 

Not to derail, but everything that's scientific is questionable. :thumbsup:

 

I'm surprised that I find myself in the awkward position of feeling like this actually has to be stated, explicitly. People who don't get the science behind human-driven climate change are commonly the first to claim that it's bunk. (As if anything could convince them). :facepalm:

 

Fun fact: Did you know that while only 48% of republicans in the US believe in global warming¹, 68% believe in demonic possession²?

 

More relevant to the discussion, insisting that we know the consequences of a hypothetical outcome like nuclear war is more than a little arrogant. It's a common trap many scientists fall into - resisting admission of ignorance.

 

¹Yale Project on Climate Change Communication

 

²Pew Research Center

[phoneyLogic]

The dangers of low level radiation (in this discussion, any fallout after two weeks, but there's a lot more) is virtually nil, and like nuclear winter, and catastrophic anthrogenic climate change are popular scare mongering, scientifically questionable at best.

 

Now, that's not to say the are dangerous, well except background radiation. But their potential for damage, including MAD, are crap.

 

Now heres the thing. Strategic nukes are plain and simple genocide machines they can't destroy Man nor Human civilization, but they can kill millions in a single strike. Thus they are more apt to be used by rouge elements.

 

They are not mythical. Their power is known, their effects can be messured and not even in the UK could they extinguish human life. And we know this because every government assessment, commie, free world, whatever came to the conclusion: no nation could win a nuclear war, but no nation was likely to go under from one.

 

A shi tsandwich, no matter how vile, is unlikely to kill you. The suffering is unfathomable, but you'll be surprised what you can live through.

 

Alright then, 3 questions:

How many times a modern cold war nuke is the equivalent of the Nagasaki bomb and what did that “Fat Man” bomb (which is in fact tiny) to Nagasaki?

How many Nukes the US or Russia did have in their stocks?

How many cities the US have with a population of more then 200000 people?

 

Let me say so: You don't need to be a scientist to know that who ever told you something about 10% casualties, is wrong.

 

And we didn't talk any word of radiation or nuclear winter yet.

[Moraelin]

But the thing is, you don't just multiply kilotons and get proportional casualties. The shockwave is subject to the inverse square law with distance same as every shockwave in air. There's a reason everyone moved on to smaller nukes instead of making thousands of Tsar Bombas.

 

The comparison to Nagasaki is also misleading. Most of the buildings in Nagasaki (and for that matter Hiroshima) were made of wood. Even a lot of small industrial factories were in wooden houses. Furthermore the city was as good as unplanned, with houses clustered tightly all over the place. Not only the wooden structures had no chance of resisting any explosive blast, but the whole matchstick city was a fire hazard waiting to happen. The big problem there was fire. Same as, dunno, in the firebombing of the Tokyo suburbs, which in fact killed more people than either nuke. The area destroyed by fire was over four times bigger than the area destroyed by the actual bomb. The actual bomb blast radius was just about 1 mile. And again, even that was more like because it was fragile wooden houses. Where concrete walls existed, there actually are people who survived by being behind one. E.g., Joe Kieyoomia, an American POW in Nagasaki. But generally it should give one food for thought that from the POWs, which were in a concrete compound, only 8 died in the bombing.

 

The destruction there was also aided by the detonation of ordinance at the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, which manufactured for example torpedoes for the Japanese Navy, and was pretty much at ground zero. The epicenter was roughly in the middle between it and the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. So, you know, some thousands of tons of conventional explosives detonated there in addition to the bomb. In fact, probably those explosives are more responsible for the deaths of the workers there than the bomb.

 

I don't think you can scale that to a cold-war nuke scenario, unless every neighbourhood in the USA has a munitions factory. Now I'm not an American, but I doubt that that's the case.

 

And besides, if you want to argue, then argue what was actually said, not whatever strawmen you can address. Nobody said that nukes were harmless. Just that there are shades of grey between zero and total annihilation of all life. And then the objection for why not let everyone have them becomes trivial: a bomb on an airplane doesn't extinguish all life on Earth either, yet you don't want every passenger to bring one :P Something can cause a lot of damage and thus be unwanted even without being basically the Death Star.

 

Besides what I said was that they WOULD cause a whole lot of people to die, just probably more from starvation and fighting over rapidly vanishing supplies, than from the actual blast or even fallout. Seems to me like still reason enough to not want them, wouldn't you say?