Also on the topic of nuclear war: I found it very surprising to see that, according to the report, the expected deaths of a US-Russia exchange is lower (3 billion) than US-China or (5.5 billion) or Russia-China (7 billion). This implies that the existential risk from nuclear war is higher from a Russia-China exchange than from a US-Russia exchange. How should we translate these expected deaths to existential risk?
I found the Guesstimate models interesting, and figured out that this is largely because a nuclear bombing of China is expected to produce the most smoke. But there’s a factor in TSG1 (“total smoke generated by nuclear weapons detonated in China (Tg)”) that I don’t understand, but that factor drives much of the differences in total smoke generated. In the US-China model it’s 1.58, and the Russia-China model it’s 2.04, while a Russian bombing of the US has only a factor of 0.664. Could you explain what this factor is and where it’s derived from?
Also: the Russia-China model has some broken links due to an extra “]” in MNO2.
Also on the topic of nuclear war: I found it very surprising to see that, according to the report, the expected deaths of a US-Russia exchange is lower (3 billion) than US-China or (5.5 billion) or Russia-China (7 billion). This implies that the existential risk from nuclear war is higher from a Russia-China exchange than from a US-Russia exchange. How should we translate these expected deaths to existential risk?
I found the Guesstimate models interesting, and figured out that this is largely because a nuclear bombing of China is expected to produce the most smoke. But there’s a factor in TSG1 (“total smoke generated by nuclear weapons detonated in China (Tg)”) that I don’t understand, but that factor drives much of the differences in total smoke generated. In the US-China model it’s 1.58, and the Russia-China model it’s 2.04, while a Russian bombing of the US has only a factor of 0.664. Could you explain what this factor is and where it’s derived from?
Also: the Russia-China model has some broken links due to an extra “]” in MNO2.