It depends on the systems of alliances and international commitments against a first strike. For instance, the Iran-Iraq War went on for several years and included the deployment of chemical weapons. I’m pretty sure that a nuclear exchange would be tolerated.
We would have nuclear war every year.
I suspect we’d only have it once.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I suggest to read about Hiroshima, and what really happened there, and afterwards.
Here’s a good book: Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a.co/d/8KS4RXC
One bomb kills people in a circle of 10 or 50 km (I forgot), and injures people maybe 100km around. Then it does damage to nature maybe even 1000 km around.
But the planet has a circumference of 40.000 km. Now let your thoughts run around the planet.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well, my point was really that, nowadays, a launch by anyone would likely result in other launches, leading to all out war and global catastrophe. I wasn’t getting into the literal size of bomb impact areas vs global surface area.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I doubt it.
Unlike your typical nice bar brawl, not everybody is actually that eager to get involved in an exchange of nukes, and alliances get sometimes weaker when the risks get higher.
Of course you are free to build your opinion on whatever speculation you like the most.
Did you know that a good share of all American nukes are mounted on short range missiles that can travel only 100 km or so? Some people were considering funny scenarios there…
Thavron@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Also, the bomb at Hiroshima was a relatively small one compared to what’s available now I believe.
Waryle@jlai.lu 1 day ago
Chernobyl is not comparable to a nuclear bomb. Chernobyl is a reactor, made to release a steadily amount of radiations for years to make electricity.
Chernobyl irradiated a large area because the graphite that was located in the reactor core has burned, and the fumes have been carried by the wind, taking a lot of high-level activity nuclear waste hundred or thousands of kilometers away.
A bomb is way smaller than a reactor, and is designed to release most of its energy instantly to make the biggest explosion possible. That means a short burst of radioactivity very high level of radioactivity, with a very small half-life.
A few days after a bomb explodes, most of the radiations would have depleted.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I know this is a settled fact, and supported by the fact that Japan had rebuilt both cities in under 6 years. But I wanted hard facts on this. Which, as it turns out, is really hard to find. I see a lot of reports basically echo what you said but nobody seems to have actually really measured this.
The best sources I found was this document from the which claims that soil radiation fell from 4.31 micro Curries per cm3 in hour 3, to just 0.23 half a day later, and 3.1x10(-5) 45 days later.
This site from the Japanese government claims that 24hrs after detonation the radiation at ground zero was 1/1000th of what it was immediately after.