RE: Does the prospect of nuclear disaster still frighten anyone these days?
March 22, 2015 at 5:43 pm
(March 22, 2015 at 12:33 pm)Chuck Wrote: I agree in the worst case of a all out nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, there would likely be some degree of nuclear winter, resulting into tens of millions of additional causalties from agricultural failure in the 1-2 years after the exchange. But I think on the whole that would be a short term effect, and it's effects will moderate within 1-2 years. The main questions is how much instability the short term femine would generate. I suspect it would generate a lot of instability in less developed parts of Africa and certain parts of Asia and South America. But I think it would not have too much effect in those ares in Euroasia untouched by the nuclear exchange where the bulk of the world's capital and productive potential is comcentrated. Those would be western and Central Europe, some of of near east, china, Japan and Australia. So long as these remaining centers of wealth and productivity don't than go to war against each other, I don't think disturbance in less developed parts of the world, catastrophic humanitarian diseaster as they would be, would likely have too much impact on the overall productive capacity of the world and by extension the world's ability to weather the storm resulting from the removal from the scene of the U.S. and Russia.
In the best case scenario, other developed parts of the world is chastened at least for a couple of decades by the nuclear exchange and more or less coopoerate in building global recovery. Maybe I am an optimist, but if a nuclear war does break out that wipes out its leading power, I think there is 50/50 chance at least that the imindof the other powers would be temporarily focused on avoiding conflict with those who can really hurt them.
Of course in the worst case scenario the remaining nuclear powers, scrambling to fill the vacume left by the destruction of the U.S. and collapse of russian authority over 1/4 of the Euroasia, gets in each other's way and fights additional nuclear battles against each other.
This would be one instance I would dearly love to be wrong. It's good that we are unlikely to learn one way or the other.
