<story><title>What science says: Could humans survive a nuclear war between NATO and Russia?</title><url>https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/03/what-the-science-says-could-humans-survive-a-nuclear-war-between-nato-and-russia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nkurz</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a recent well-researched post that comes to essentially the opposite conclusion:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The basic conclusion of all of this is simple. Nuclear war is definitely not an existential threat to humanity, much less to all life on the planet. Most people even in major urban areas would survive the initial attack, along with a surprising amount of infrastructure. This isn’t to minimize the effects, as it would be a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in human history, as the global economy breaks down and regions are pushed back on their own resources. This could easily kill more people than the war itself, particularly in densely-populated areas, but I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th&amp;#x2F;early 20th century and start back up.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.navalgazing.net&amp;#x2F;Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.navalgazing.net&amp;#x2F;Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main difference is that he concludes that nuclear winter is mostly a myth.    His main evidence is that the effect on weather of the soot produced by the oil wells burning in Kuwait in 1991 did not match the nuclear winter theory predictions.  It would be interesting to reconcile these two disparate conclusions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>poof131</author><text>My biggest concern with that article is some of the assumptions, such as most the warheads will go after random army bases in unpopulated areas.  I feel like that is a very “conventional” war attitude from an armchair tactician.  My guess would be a strategy of annihilating all key US &amp;amp; EU population centers.  Utterly destroy DC, NY, SF, LA, etc.&lt;p&gt;After spending a decade in the military, I saw a consistent theme of underestimating opponents and making plans on how we want them to act.  War isn’t rational and never plays out how you want it to.  The people trying to make nuclear war seem like a reasonable outcome terrify me, especially when they make assumptions about how the opponent would act that best aligns with what they want to happen.</text></comment>
<story><title>What science says: Could humans survive a nuclear war between NATO and Russia?</title><url>https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/03/what-the-science-says-could-humans-survive-a-nuclear-war-between-nato-and-russia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nkurz</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a recent well-researched post that comes to essentially the opposite conclusion:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The basic conclusion of all of this is simple. Nuclear war is definitely not an existential threat to humanity, much less to all life on the planet. Most people even in major urban areas would survive the initial attack, along with a surprising amount of infrastructure. This isn’t to minimize the effects, as it would be a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in human history, as the global economy breaks down and regions are pushed back on their own resources. This could easily kill more people than the war itself, particularly in densely-populated areas, but I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th&amp;#x2F;early 20th century and start back up.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.navalgazing.net&amp;#x2F;Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.navalgazing.net&amp;#x2F;Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main difference is that he concludes that nuclear winter is mostly a myth.    His main evidence is that the effect on weather of the soot produced by the oil wells burning in Kuwait in 1991 did not match the nuclear winter theory predictions.  It would be interesting to reconcile these two disparate conclusions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>justin66</author><text>&amp;gt; I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th&amp;#x2F;early 20th century and start back up.&lt;p&gt;Except it would need to restart without all the easily accessible fossil fuels and lumber of that time…</text></comment>