Fallout's Government Apparently Stupid

[phoneyLogic]

Yeah, yeah, dream on. But there are many scientists out there and even in Europe. Believe it or not, but some of them actually calculated that only 10% of the Russian arsenal can be enough to criticaly strike human kind and most natural eco systems. Do I believe them or just some folks I meet on the interwebs which constantly tries to downplay most of the nuclear side effects?

 

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.

:facepalm:

 

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.

Are you kidding or just kind of making fun of it?

 

Edit

Anyway, I just realize that we got really off-topic. :confused: My apologize to the thread opener.

Edited December 16, 2012 by tortured Tomato

[charwo]

No, it's not as far off topic as it might seem. Besides, the best conversations are always tangents.

 

I can show you people who firmly believed that setting off that first nuke in Trinity was going to cause the atmosphere to ignite and was going to evaporate all life in the Norther hemisphere at least. The kind of thing you're talking about Tomato is a both a cascade effect of unprecedented scale and a positive feedback loop of ludicrous proportions. Those same people likely have kept their mouth shut when the growth in Pripiyat showed them all to be something between liars and fools. Don't trust the calculations, they're just models and models tend to be quite flawed in how they actually work. Example: the Bohr model of atoms is dead wrong in so many details it's unbelievable, but still, that model is more approachable and more applicable than all but the most cumbersome, exact knowledge of quantum mechanical models.

 

All doomsaying, from any quarter, needs to be taken with a regime of skepticism. Scientists say so? So what? Scientists are not oracles, nor are there models. It's not that they can't say anything important but anything utopian or apocalyptic requires extensive extrapolation. Honestly, I don't trust any effects of the nukes beyond the two week marker because the earth has a remarkable, if not fully understood, track record of homeostasis. Whatever we do, earth will counter and clean up and forget. That's kind of the point of my favorite post apocalyptic show ever, Life After People.

 

Or as George Carlin put it (being a man of average knowledge but great wisdom): The Earth is fine. The PEOPLE are f***ed. The people are going away.

[TrickyVein]

Interesting interpretation, charwo. Over what time-scales do you consider the Earth to be in homeostasis? And how is this 'normal' defined?

 

Ice ages represent large fluxes of extremes of temperature and atmospheric and ocean circulation that have *only* become regular, that is occurring every few 10's of 1000's of years, in the Pleistocene and Holocene. (An ice age is defined by the presence of ice at the poles.) Prior to this, over time-scales of millions of years, the Earth did not undergo as frequent or extreme changes in global temperature. There were big changes, of course - usually marking the boundaries between geological time, but on timescales that are orders of magnitude larger than the violent swings in climate that we seem to be experiencing now - meaning recently, <10mya.

 

See, my interpretation is that Earth's climate system has been 'oscillating' more frequently and to greater extremes in recent geological time. Our contribution most recently of course isn't the cause of this, but it does add imbalance to an already unpredictable and unbalanced system. If the Earth does indeed tend towards homeostasis as you claim, then human contribution makes it less likely that such homeostasis will be achieved.

 

So when, exactly has the Earth been in homeostasis, and how would you characterize it? Would you define it as being agreeable for humans to live on its surface? How can you give weight to a period that represents a minuscule fraction of the history of life on the planet? The dinosaurs lived on this planet for millions of years before mammals evolved in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial impactor. CO₂ levels in the atmosphere during the Jurassic and Triassic were much higher than they are today. The giant lizards were around for much longer than mammals have been, living in a climate that is very different than ours. Was theirs more 'normal' a climate?

Edited December 18, 2012 by TrickyVein

[charwo]

Well, in this case, Earth being in Homeostasis is pretty much a given, except in the wake of extreme challenges. Nuclear war, even as conceived at the height of Mad, is not one of them. In order to knock the Earth out of homeostasis would require something like one of the larger supevolcanoes (like Yellowstone Caldera) to erupt. Before I go too much into it, I want to say that Randall Clark's apocalypse log in Honest Hearts is about as close as Fallout lore comes to depicting the aftermath of nuclear war right. Even then, nothing radioactive glows green, and what happened to Zion Valley from Halloween 2077 to New Years 2078 wouldn't happen in Zion, they'd only happen in the worst effected parts of downwind Fallout areas, which would including the entire East Coast. Because of the Mountains, Zion would receive no Fallout from the destruction of California. Needless to say, by 22281 or in my fan discontinuity 2181, the environmental damage from the bombs would be over.

 

As for the more extreme weather, there's a reason for this: Antarctica. Because Antarctica sits over the south pole, it prevents the circulation of ocean currents along longitudinal lines, making the weather extreme. It also cools the planet by keeping a permanent ice sheet that reflects solar energy. Surprising as this sounds, for most of Earth's history, the Earth has been totally ice free. Completely. And with much, MUCH milder climate variations to boot. Like I say, God gave us a death world so Humanity could be badasses.

 

In this case, let's look at the projections of the Iraqi Oil Fires versus what they actually did. First, the models are clearly off in how much dirt, grit and nastiness you have to put into the atmosphere into the air in order to cause agriculturally significant cooling. The other is that ecology does not allow for testing against a single variable: change anything in a biosphere, and the biosphere will adapt with great zeal. Antarctica more or less made landfall with the South Pole about 23 Million BC, it took another 8 mil to be half covered in ice (15 Million BC) and was only covered completely about 6 Million Years, ago, although there was an extensive temperate forest 400 miles from the South Pole 3 million years ago (See for yourself: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-4164401.html)

 

Life is built to thrive on chaos. Life will adapt very quickly. And remember too that Krakatoa had several pertinent things going for it:

 

1. It's explosion was about 200 MT (about 10,000X of Fallout's 20kt bombs as mandated by international treaties mentioned in the Vault Dwellers Survival Guide in Fallout 1)

2. Unlike any atomic bomb, it was INSIDE the earth, and displaced 12 square kilometers of heavy earth. By contrast, even a low explosion from a bomb will only suck up lose debris and at most a few feet of soil from Ground Zero.

3. It ejected that stuff 25km into the air, further than most bomb explosions, which means its ability to stay in the air and cause nuclear winter would be much higher.

4. Despite sucking more dirt into the atmosphere than could be dreamed of in an atomic war and sticking higher in the atmosphere, the climate effects were not catastrophic even for local agriculture and the effects were gone in FIVE YEARS,

5. Also, just to kick the dog, Krakatoa was six and a half times smaller than the largest recorded explosion, Theta, in the Mediterranean in 1500 BC. There was no nuclear winter, the pre-agricultural people of the Med, including early New Kingdom Egypt took no notice at all. The surviving accounts of that era see civilizations being wiped out by the Sea Peoples, who won not because their enemies had been weakened, but because they were the unholy portent of both Vikings and Klingons.

 

I don't even put faith in anthropogenic climate change, but if it is true, it poses a far greater environmental risk than nuclear war because nuclear war is a one time event. Human pollution goes on and on, day after day, not just holding but expanding.

[phoneyLogic]

Charwo, this discussion is pointless if you just don't want to see the legit points your opponents make. It's like playing football or soccer while one team just ignores the game rules.

 

You claim that all others are wrong and only your imagination of possibilities is the only one to happen. Your guesswork and personal views / opinions are not really backed up or underlined with facts. And even if you do, they are manipulated to fit you opinion.

 

A good example is how you describe (mother?) earth as kind of invincible, which just is nonsense. In return TrickyVein pointed out that there has been really big waves of extinctions. To times the flora and fauna died out as a whole. We face extinctions of species even right today just because mankind is being there. How can you discuss such serious existing problems if your opponent just dosn't want to take them into account? Instead just pushing it away with some other opinions and guesswork.

 

But this is a common issue of internet discussions which is as follows:

A states his opinion.

B states his opinion.

A ignores B's arguments or just doesn't take them serious.

A repeats his opinion in certain variations.

B wont be taken serious.

 

All doomsaying, from any quarter, needs to be taken with a regime of skepticism.

Thanks for trying making me sceptic but I already am and always was. :wink:

Scientists say so? So what? Scientists are not oracles, nor are there models. It's not that they can't say anything important but anything utopian or apocalyptic requires extensive extrapolation.

Well, fine enough, serious science can sometimes be described as "extensive extrapolation"

 

Honestly, I don't trust any effects of the nukes beyond the two week marker because the earth has a remarkable, if not fully understood, track record of homeostasis. Whatever we do, earth will counter and clean up and forget. That's kind of the point of my favorite post apocalyptic show ever, Life After People.

 

"Well, in this case, Earth being in Homeostasis is pretty much a given, except in the wake of extreme challenges. Nuclear war, even as conceived at the height of Mad, is not one of them..."

Pretty much a given... Well, even though the time scales of change might be quite long, there is not really a "Homeostasis" - at least none you could "rely on".

But it is pretty much "a given" that if something died out, it usually doesn't ever come back.

Natural eco systems are way more complex like you want to face.

If you throw a nuclear bomb onto an eco system, it's gone. The more you throw the more will die. Somewhere is a point where things are going critical, pretty dramatic and fast. "Just 5 years died out" is something that may last forever. And extinctions are not a hypothesis, they are happening today...

 

Even clever beings like the Neanderthaler died out. Obviously there was no "Homeostasis" to protect him, no mother Earth full of forgiveness.

Edited December 20, 2012 by tortured Tomato

[TrickyVein]

Charwo, you've omitted a few things from your explanation. It is also factually suspect.

 

How does Antarctica make weather extreme? And where? (Are you conflating climate and weather?) The circulation of the ocean and deep water currents do indeed 'circle' around the South Pole which is normal. I don't follow your logic. If we change the salinity of ocean water through acidification then we could potentially affect ocean circulation which may result in abnormal, maybe extreme weather. Maybe not the deep ocean currents around the south pole, but throughout the gulf-stream, yes. Your thinking seems to be backwards on this. You also know that the North pole contributes to the planet's albedo. It is now regularly ice-free in the summertime and glaciers across Greenland and throughout higher latitudes are shrinking and already gone. I don't need to spell out why this upsets the energy balance of Earth's climate. Don't be obtuse.

 

I am quite aware of Earth's (largely) ice-free history. This is entirely my point. The fluctuations in Earth's climate only most recently have been large enough and frequent enough to give us ice at the poles in varying amounts across timescales of 10s of 1000s of years. This is a new phenomenon. It definitely doesn't support the idea that the persistence of Earth's climate - as it is - 'is a given.' Milankovitch cycles; the amounts of trace gasses in the atmosphere; the presence of ice at the poles; the configuration of landmasses and ocean circulation; all are variables which affect global climate, and our knowledge of these variables is incomplete throughout time.

 

Also, the eruption of Thera - not Theta - (which btw was not the largest recorded eruption in human history. That distinction belongs to Toba, some 69-77kya which geneticists believe is the reason for a 'bottleneck' effect in the human population at around the same time) actually did contribute to burying some Minoan town centers in ash, like Akrotiri. I'm sure they took no notice of the explosion whatsoever. :thumbsup:

 

This makes your next point m00t, but anyway, the Sea Peoples hypothesis is by no means accepted within academic circles. It was a convenient way to explain the 'dark ages' which affected civilizations throughout the Mediterranean and across the Peninsula starting in the 12th century, BC. The term comes from a xenophobic Egypt who saw everyone who wasn't like them as invaders and barbarians. It would be rather unscientific to accept this as a foregone conclusion.

 

Whatever, the burden of proof doesn't lie with you and I'm not making you into a straw-man or straw-woman. The science behind your arguments is cherry-picked, and you haven't made yourself credible.

[phoneyLogic]

I am quite aware of Earth's (largely) ice-free history. This is entirely my point. The fluctuations in Earth's climate only most recently have been large enough and frequent enough to give us ice at the poles in varying amounts across timescales of 10s of 1000s of years. This is a new phenomenon. It definitely doesn't support the idea that the persistence of Earth's climate - as it is - 'is a given.' Milankovitch cycles; the amounts of trace gasses in the atmosphere; the presence of ice at the poles; the configuration of landmasses and ocean circulation; all are variables which affect global climate, and our knowledge of these variables is incomplete throughout time.

It's not that new. There has been several great Ice Ages by time but as Charwo correctly said, Ice Ages are not the norm. Round about 80% of the Earths history can be considered ice-free. The process is not understood entirely but there are many possibilities, the atmosphere and climate are quite complex.

They definitely change.

Other factors have a more ore less important impact. As you said, knowledge is incomplete though. One thing I may add, these 80% of ice-free time is not exactly a well tempered one. You can assume +20° higher overall temperatures and more. Yes, really warm Oceans and so on, very close to a greenhouse or even a sauna. Not that friendly for us, but more stable after all.

 

Anyway, there was some disagreement about the possible outcome of a nuclear war and this is something we really can't predict in detail – but most likely it's bad enough to hope we wont ever find out.

 

Edit

In 2007 the nuclear winter has been revisited with a modern climate model and it's outcome still is catastrophic.

Edited December 20, 2012 by tortured Tomato

[charwo]

OK, there's a couiple of really, REALLY bad arguments going on here. It's not that I refuse to consider another's argument, it's that I have to be strongly convinced to the contrary, and this evidence is weak. In general, I have no time for models. I'm very conservative and historically minded so I'm less interested in the theoretical, rather than the historical record. And th historical record is such as I have presented it.

 

1. Tricky, Thera (and I did put Theta, but that was a typo) was the largest explosion is recorded history. Toba was larger, many times larger. But it was 68,000 years before humanity started writing. And there has been serious discussion about how badly it affected Humanity. Even in a near total die off, there's increasing evidence that population recovery was three to four generations. It's important to understand that the deference between sustainable population and maximum sustainable population were much narrower in those times, but the Human range was quickly restored.

 

2. The Kuwaiti Oil Fires and their effects contrary to the postulated effects is not wishful thinking on my part. See Look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires

Every calculation was wrong. The low calculations were wrong,. the high calculations which said it was going to be like The Year Without Summer was wrong. The medium projection was closest to being right in terms of atmospheric disposition and spread, but and this is the more important part, it had no general atmospheric effect, virtually no cooling effect despite being heavily concentrated in the local scene. While a horrible disaster locally, it had no effect at all despite burning six million barrels a day of dirty crude.

 

3. And to compound the issue, let's look at the 1815 Tambora explosion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

I'm not impressed. 1816 was no Apocalypse. It was a really shitty year, but that's it. States didn't fall, and even in Europe with 200,000 people starving to death wasn't but a drop in the bucket. Europe had a population of 43 million. And agriculture in Midwest and lower barely suffered at all. This was the worst eruption in 3,000 years, and it DIDN'T MATTER. It didn't do anything. It's a Peter McNeely.

 

4. And just to settle this question of Homeostasis, look a this badboy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

A Volcano Exclusivity Index means a VEI - 8 eruptions are colossal events that throw out at least 1,000 km3 (240 cu mi) Dense Rock Equivalent (DRE) of ejecta. and a VEI - 7 events eject at least 100 cubic kilometers (24 cu mi) DRE. In Tambora, you have a VEI-7 with a volume ejaculate of 160 square km in terms of DRE. Now, I couldn't find a direct weight of DRE, but according to http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm, dense earth is 2002 kg per meter, or 2 tonnes. But there are 1 Billion cubic meters in a cubic kilometer. Altogether this means that the displacement of Tambora was 160 Billion tonnes of earth. Now according to these 'models' nuclear winter can occur at 150 terragrams, and equivalent to 150 megatonnes of earth displacement. Tambora blew up 2,000X that amount, IN THE TROPICS, where by these models should have the greatest the effect. And there was ONE BAD SUMMER. Just one: 1816. And what's more, 1816 was the middle period of the Dalton Minimum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum, which had really, abnormally low solar activity between 1790 and 1830. Tambora's effect, as little as it was, was compounded by an independent phenomena.

 

Climatology models are crap. Nuclear Winter as anything other than an interesting and mostly harmless side effect of blowing mankind back into the 18th century, is a load of crap. And it gets worse: these kind of eruptions happen all the time. There have been at least 4 Tambora scale volcanoes going up in the last 4000 years. All of them caused major hurt. None of them threatened civilizations. What's more is that the Yellowstone Caldera, the one that spewed well over 1,000 cubic kilometers caused no mass extinction. And Toba as a bottleneck is hotly disputed. The 1,000 viable mating pairs is actually the most sensationalist of the theories. The mainstream of the Toba Disaster hypothesis, not those who reject it, estimate it only killed 60% of the human race. That's serious, but it's not apocalyptic. We have many reasons to fear nuclear war, but we have no reason to fear nuclear winter. We have seen comparable phenomena, we've seen worse, and shrugged it off, and forgotten about it.

 

See, when I tell you you're wrong, it's not wishful thinking, I research this crap thoroughly. I don't like writing up posts like this though because it took me THREE hours to back track and find what I was looking for. Truth is objective. Furthermore, I have looked at the countervailing evidence, and in comparing it to historical phenomena, found it sorely lacking. It's been said that writers have no sense of scale, and apparently so do climatologists. One should never confuse human interest suffering (like the Year Without Summer) with Class 1 Apocalypses (full scale nuclear war) class 2 Apocalypses (the worst possible supervolcano eruption) and a an extinction event (the bio engineered bug that kills us all, Skynet, the moon crashing into the earth). Its not that these events are impossible, it's simply that they aren't as dangerous as the fear mongers are trying to sell you on.

Edited December 21, 2012 by charwo

[TrickyVein]

I appreciate the time you take to present the information you want to use. That investment of time is completely your decision.

 

Point taken with regards to the relevance - or lack thereof - of a non-historical event. If this represents the limits of the Truth^TM that you're willing to consider, than we are talking past one another, and it seems the problem is epistemological - and yours to deal with. I don't believe that we can have a meaningful discussion of climate without considering how it's changed throughout geologic time. What is the justification for placing the discussion exclusively within a narrow historical framework? Why not consider the eruption of Toba which was before writing? How does this diminish its impact? Simply because you choose not to believe in the authenticity of an event which happened outside of history? (Part of me is trying to understand why/how this even matters.)

 

Of course, whatever evidence there is 'to the contrary' of a hypothetical event is going to be wholly unconvincing - it has no historical precedent! This is exactly why we construct models. Nuclear war is outside of the purview of history, so why cling to it, when there are alternative and potentially better ways to examine the issue? We're not really well-equipped to have this discussion without looking at the science behind modeling. There have been false predictions, yes. The science has been incomplete. If you think this justifies throwing it all out the window, then I can't really stop you - but what's the point if you've already limited yourself to what kind of truth you're going to arrive at? It seems awfully reciprocal.

[phoneyLogic]

4. And just to settle this question of Homeostasis, look a this badboy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

A Volcano Exclusivity Index means a VEI - 8 eruptions are colossal events that throw out at least 1,000 km3 (240 cu mi) Dense Rock Equivalent (DRE) of ejecta. and a VEI - 7 events eject at least 100 cubic kilometers (24 cu mi) DRE. In Tambora, you have a VEI-7 with a volume ejaculate of 160 square km in terms of DRE. Now, I couldn't find a direct weight of DRE, but according to http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm, dense earth is 2002 kg per meter, or 2 tonnes. But there are 1 Billion cubic meters in a cubic kilometer. Altogether this means that the displacement of Tambora was 160 Billion tonnes of earth. Now according to these 'models' nuclear winter can occur at 150 terragrams, and equivalent to 150 megatonnes of earth displacement. Tambora blew up 2,000X that amount, IN THE TROPICS, where by these models should have the greatest the effect. And there was ONE BAD SUMMER. Just one: 1816. And what's more, 1816 was the middle period of the Dalton Minimum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum, which had really, abnormally low solar activity between 1790 and 1830. Tambora's effect, as little as it was, was compounded by an independent phenomena.

An ejecta of 1,000 km³ DRE doesn't necessarily mean that 100% were ash blown into the atmosphere. Most of it can be lava or just volcanic rocks. It's not surprising that ejected magma can achieve enormous amounts, new lands are built from. I for myself life in an area which once was a basalt plate of hundrets of square kilometres. Whereas those 150 Tg from the climate model are related to the smoke which has been blown into atmosphere.

 

Anyway, of cause you are free to question climate models, I'm not a fan of them either. But regarding a nuclear winter we don't have a historic precedence. So besides of our common sense, those models try to sum up everything we have, based on what we know about climate and mathematical logic. It's neither mumbo jumbo nor the final truth.

 

Basically those effects multiply each other. Where do the 150 Tg come from? From many burned cities, destroyed infra structures, natural eco systems, died creatures etc.

 

Your opinion about radiation seems to be quite contrary to the common or mine as well. So we probably wont find a conclusion we share.

 

Don't get me wrong, this isn't necessary. After all it's quite interesting to learn about different views and how we try to measure and weighten facts. There still is an controversial but I absolutely don't see how you and Moraelin can say that science or even the game Fallout is wrong in all these aspects. It's not been proven.

Edited December 21, 2012 by tortured Tomato