Does the prospect of nuclear disaster still frighten anyone these days?

[Anomalocaris]

If you live in the blast/firestorm zones, it'll be quick. For those in Butt-Fuck, Ks. or Middlanowhere, Id. not so much. Radiation poisoning's a slow painful way to die. Even if you're outside the blast/firestorm and fallout areas there will be massive disruption of all the infrastructure (natural gas, water, electricity, hospitals) we depend on to survive. Add in nuclear winter and possibly thinning of the ozone layer afterwards and you have a recipe for suffering rarely seen anywhere on this planet, all over the planet.

No, it won't be "fairly quick" except for those in immediate target areas.

... to say nothing of the massive amounts of mutations which will certainly put paid to most of the succeeding generations in the hot zones -- meaning that most if not all of the genetically viable human survivors will be isolated from one another, without an advanced transport network to connect with each other.

I think mutation conveys the wrong popular perception. There won't be X-men or a different specie running around. Notably Elevated rate of cancers and congenital genetic defect with wide spread unhealthful consequences better convey the likely result.

It is also difficult to see why population would be more isolated than in pre-industrial Europe of 17-18th century.

All this depends on the scale of nuclear exchange, of course. Lengthy and widespread failure of modern infrastructure leaving little in the way of major, undamaged industrial and economic centers that can quickly (within a decade or two) reestablish much of world wide network of trade and commerce is almost inconceivable without a full on nuclear exchange between big blocks of allied nuclear powers, a situation which has not existed since 1989, does not exist and has no foreseeable potential to exist. Even if Russia and the U.S. were to unload their entire arsenals at each other today, over 70% of the world's industrial and economic capacity would not be directly effected, and even absorbing the impact from drifting fallout, global connectedness, one still expect the world outside the U.S. and Russia would make good the loss of Russia and the U.S. in 1-2 decades.

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Admiral Lockwood should have been prosecuted for doing the same thing in the Pacific that Dönitz did in the Atlantic, executing unrestricted submarine warfare.

They dropped the charges on that one, since with Otto Kranzbühler Dönitz had a lawyer, who really knew his job and the anglosaxon system of case law, precedence and cross examination. He wrote to Chester Nimitz and got his client off.

Dönitz produced an affidavit from Admiral Chester Nimitz who testified that the United States had used unrestricted warfare as a tactic in the Pacific and that American submarines did not rescue survivors in situations where their own safety was in question. In view of all the facts proved and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on the 8th May, 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak, and the answers to interrogatories by Admiral Nimitz stating that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, the sentence of Doenitz was not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/w...oenitz.htm

Btw, to move this back to nuclear disaster. Does anyone remember the hype surrounding the neutron bomb around 1981? It was one of the first military brainfarts of the Reagan years and kill people but leave the infrastructure intact for future use. Donovan even wrote a song about it back then and being 18 and pretty peace moved, we used to sing it around our campfires.

Neutron bombs are heavily overhyped. Neutron bombs are designed to discharge abnormally high level of radiation, so it would have an abnormally large lethal radius from direct radiation effect, but it is still basically a normal hydrogen bomb, generally with middle level explosive yield. It is not likely to leave many Unhardened structures intact within the lethal range of its radiation. The only major difference is it is likely to be more lethal against the crew of highly hardened military targets, like main battle tanks, which otherwise would survive being within 1500 feet of nuclear epicenter.

So as a civilian without access to extremely hardened shelters, whether the bomb is a normal hydrogen bomb or a neutron bomb of comparable yield would make almost no difference. Only if you are ensconced in a missile silo or a NBC protected main battle tank would you have cause to see whether you are on the receiving end of a neutron bomb or a mere normal nuke.