This was a lot to unpack but I agree that it would be extremely difficult for the human race to go extinct. Although 99.9% of all species have gone extinct. It is our enormous numbers and ability to adapt and specialize in different ecological niches using our tools instead of our biology that makes us hard to kill. I keep coming back to this forum because I like to see the academic perspective on nuclear conflict. Although there is still a lot of misinformation on surviving a nuclear war.
In my experience most people avoid thinking about nuclear conflict and it is not something I can bring up in casual conversation. Even the people who identify as preppers fall into nuclear nihilism and say they would want to be cindered in a flash of light rather than go through a nuclear winter.
Most preppers do not build bunkers and besides bunkers are unnecessary. Most preppers have a small amount of extra supplies for a brief interruption of services. They are not planning on bushcrafting to survive or single handedly rebuilding civilization. The research you linked on preppers complains that preppers are often thought as crazies like on the TV show doomsday preppers but still studies that fringe.
Nonetheless, I think most preppers would survive a nuclear war. In fact I believe a family can guarantee their survival in a nuclear war for under $5k. That is cheap insurance against a real risk that can be spread out over several years.
I loved the book, The Knowledge, and have read it a few times. I am jealous if you got the chance to pick the brain of Lewis Dartnell. I agree with his premise that the goal should be to restore civilization as fast as possible if it should collapse. A good primer was needed even if it is missing hydraulics and electronics.
But I think in order to rebuild we first have to show that people can survive something like a nuclear war. A lot of great material on surviving a nuclear war comes from the Cold War era. At the time the governments were afraid that if they instructed people directly on how to survive a nuclear war that they would be signaling to them that they intended to start one. They didn’t want people to think it was inevitable even if statistically it is inevitable. Besides people would cut their funding if they became too afraid. This is how unofficial but official information was created like protect and survive in the UK and Nuclear War Survival Skill in the US.
In Nuclear War Survival Skills they tested their shelters against blast effects and verified a family could build a covered foxhole in 48 hours. Before the nuclear test ban treaty shelters were tested against real nuclear weapons. Most buried structures that can support the weight of earth above them can survive an airburst. We also know the UK did practice nuclear wargames to train officials to make the best possible decisions in the worst possible scenarios. They included members of the BBC in their wargames and unsurprisingly created the dystopian science fiction film Threads which has been called the most realistic depiction of nuclear war.
If a covered foxhole as described on page 123 here a few buckets of food, and electronics wrapped in aluminum foil inside a metal trashcan (to protect against an EMP), can defeat an all out nuclear attack then humanity will survive and rebuild. MAD will be remembered as the greatest waste in the history of the human race of money, time and lost potential.
I am still waiting for an analysis comparing the Brian Toon article on nuclear winter and the Los Alamos nuclear winter paper that predicts much smaller cooling effects.
I am still waiting for an analysis comparing the Brian Toon article on nuclear winter and the Los Alamos nuclear winter paper that predicts much smaller cooling effects.
I’d also be keen to see additional work on the climate, agricultural, and famine effects of nuclear war, perhaps ideally by a third team which isn’t connected to either of those teams. I may soon write a (not super in-depth or groundbreaking) set of summaries/analyses of the limited work that does exist, for posting on the Forum. In the meantime, you may find the back-and-forth between the Toon team and the Reisner team interesting (if you haven’t seen it already):
I’d also be keen to see additional work on the climate, agricultural, and famine effects of nuclear war, perhaps ideally by a third team which isn’t connected to either of those teams.
You have probably read the Nature article but they predict 5 billion dead (out of 6.7 billion using 2010 statistics.)
1. “the impact of secondary ignitions, such as gas line breaks, are not considered … For example, evidence of secondary ignitions in the Hiroshima conflagration ensuing the nuclear bombing … led to unique conditions that resulted in significantly enhanced fire behavior.” They ignored processes that took place in Hiroshima, preventing their simulation from producing as big fires.
2. In contrast to the Hiroshima fire, Reisner et al. simulated a line fire, similar to most forest fires that start at a single point. Hiroshima mass fires started from many ignition points distributed over the zone of the thermal pulse and pressure wave. Such mass fires are much more intense than line fires.
3. Reisner et al. assume a wind profile with 6–8 m/s winds in the boundary layer, which they call “very calm,” but which are significantly above the threshold of 3.6 m/s for a firestorm.
4. They used “a section of suburban Atlanta, GA were chosen for use as a ‘generic suburb’ for the study.” This is clearly not representative of dense cities in India and Pakistan, and therefore would not have the correct fuel loading. They did this because they do not have data for India and Pakistan cities. They claim, without support, that buildings there are primarily concrete and not wood. However, even for concrete buildings, it is the contents that burn and provide the fuel load. We are actually doing inventories of actual buildings to get this right.
5. “A dry atmosphere was utilized, and pyro-cumulus impacts or precipitation from pyro-cumulonimbus were not considered.” Thus they eliminate a major source of buoyancy that would loft the soot, and latent heat of condensation.
6. Their simulations of fire were only run for 40 minutes, and they did not actually model firestorms.
In summary, Reisner et al. (2018) modeled the wrong type of fire (they should have modeled a mass fire), in an area with lower fuel loading than we considered (a suburb not a city), they omitted factors known to be important to smoke lofting (latent heat release), they used too high wind speeds, and they didn’t model the full duration of the event.
I read their reasoning is that any nuclear weapon will create a firestorm. So the size of the weapon is almost irrelevant. It is true that a smaller weapon created the Hiroshima firestorm. Therefore they argue that even a Pakistan-India conflict would generate enough firestorms and generate enough aerosols to disrupt agriculture and kill billions.
I do not believe modern cities would firestorm as easily as Hiroshima which had mostly wooden structures. Most concrete structures would collapse and smother material inside them extinguishing fires created from the initial flash. To get Tokyo to firestorm a special weapon was created and used under ideal conditions.
The Dresden firestorm was also engineered and consisted of two waves of airplanes. The first dropped blockbuster bombs to open up the concrete structures to expose the flammable materials inside. The second wave dropped incendiary bombs to ignite the exposed materials.
However, let’s assume that every nuclear weapon creates a firestorm. Also I will assume the fires cannot be put out due to the fallout dangers after a nuclear attack which suppress firefighting.
I also trust their atmospheric modeling and famine simulations for different levels of soot in the stratosphere which are here:
The model focuses on soot, black carbon, which is lifted into the stratosphere with the pyro-cumulonimbus cloud that forms with a firestorm. They argue the black carbon does not rainout but instead absorbs sunlight and is lifted even higher into the stratosphere where it persists for years.
Soot will auto-ignite at the temperatures required to generate firestorms. Above 500C with oxygen present it will turn into carbon dioxide. They also argue that cities have more plastics that generate soot and even that the asphalt will burn. All the plastics are petroleum products which at high enough temperatures and in the presence of oxygen, like in a firestorm will turn into water vapor and carbon dioxide.
I suspect the pyro-cumulonimbus clouds are mostly water vapor and a mixture of other aerosols which are less efficient at absorbing sunlight. There should be enough water vapor that condenses around any black carbon at those altitudes.
A forest fire, like in Australia, that created the pyro-cumulonimbus clouds they reference was created in dry conditions with extremely dry eucalyptus trees. It did not boil lakes, rivers or the standing water left in destroyed urban infrastructure. Cities are relatively wet, fire-sprinklers are everywhere.
This was a lot to unpack but I agree that it would be extremely difficult for the human race to go extinct. Although 99.9% of all species have gone extinct. It is our enormous numbers and ability to adapt and specialize in different ecological niches using our tools instead of our biology that makes us hard to kill. I keep coming back to this forum because I like to see the academic perspective on nuclear conflict. Although there is still a lot of misinformation on surviving a nuclear war.
In my experience most people avoid thinking about nuclear conflict and it is not something I can bring up in casual conversation. Even the people who identify as preppers fall into nuclear nihilism and say they would want to be cindered in a flash of light rather than go through a nuclear winter.
Most preppers do not build bunkers and besides bunkers are unnecessary. Most preppers have a small amount of extra supplies for a brief interruption of services. They are not planning on bushcrafting to survive or single handedly rebuilding civilization. The research you linked on preppers complains that preppers are often thought as crazies like on the TV show doomsday preppers but still studies that fringe.
Nonetheless, I think most preppers would survive a nuclear war. In fact I believe a family can guarantee their survival in a nuclear war for under $5k. That is cheap insurance against a real risk that can be spread out over several years.
I loved the book, The Knowledge, and have read it a few times. I am jealous if you got the chance to pick the brain of Lewis Dartnell. I agree with his premise that the goal should be to restore civilization as fast as possible if it should collapse. A good primer was needed even if it is missing hydraulics and electronics.
But I think in order to rebuild we first have to show that people can survive something like a nuclear war. A lot of great material on surviving a nuclear war comes from the Cold War era. At the time the governments were afraid that if they instructed people directly on how to survive a nuclear war that they would be signaling to them that they intended to start one. They didn’t want people to think it was inevitable even if statistically it is inevitable. Besides people would cut their funding if they became too afraid. This is how unofficial but official information was created like protect and survive in the UK and Nuclear War Survival Skill in the US.
In Nuclear War Survival Skills they tested their shelters against blast effects and verified a family could build a covered foxhole in 48 hours. Before the nuclear test ban treaty shelters were tested against real nuclear weapons. Most buried structures that can support the weight of earth above them can survive an airburst. We also know the UK did practice nuclear wargames to train officials to make the best possible decisions in the worst possible scenarios. They included members of the BBC in their wargames and unsurprisingly created the dystopian science fiction film Threads which has been called the most realistic depiction of nuclear war.
If a covered foxhole as described on page 123 here a few buckets of food, and electronics wrapped in aluminum foil inside a metal trashcan (to protect against an EMP), can defeat an all out nuclear attack then humanity will survive and rebuild. MAD will be remembered as the greatest waste in the history of the human race of money, time and lost potential.
I am still waiting for an analysis comparing the Brian Toon article on nuclear winter and the Los Alamos nuclear winter paper that predicts much smaller cooling effects.
I’d also be keen to see additional work on the climate, agricultural, and famine effects of nuclear war, perhaps ideally by a third team which isn’t connected to either of those teams. I may soon write a (not super in-depth or groundbreaking) set of summaries/analyses of the limited work that does exist, for posting on the Forum. In the meantime, you may find the back-and-forth between the Toon team and the Reisner team interesting (if you haven’t seen it already):
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019JD030777
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019JD031281
You have probably read the Nature article but they predict 5 billion dead (out of 6.7 billion using 2010 statistics.)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
People are freaking out over their analysis.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/wp3t34/nuclear_war_would_cause_global_famine_with_more/
Here’s the analysis:
The problems with Reisner et al. (2018):
1. “the impact of secondary ignitions, such as gas line breaks, are not considered … For example, evidence of secondary ignitions in the Hiroshima conflagration ensuing the nuclear bombing … led to unique conditions that resulted in significantly enhanced fire behavior.” They ignored processes that took place in Hiroshima, preventing their simulation from producing as big fires.
2. In contrast to the Hiroshima fire, Reisner et al. simulated a line fire, similar to most forest fires that start at a single point. Hiroshima mass fires started from many ignition points distributed over the zone of the thermal pulse and pressure wave. Such mass fires are much more intense than line fires.
3. Reisner et al. assume a wind profile with 6–8 m/s winds in the boundary layer, which they call “very calm,” but which are significantly above the threshold of 3.6 m/s for a firestorm.
4. They used “a section of suburban Atlanta, GA were chosen for use as a ‘generic suburb’ for the study.” This is clearly not representative of dense cities in India and Pakistan, and therefore would not have the correct fuel loading. They did this because they do not have data for India and Pakistan cities. They claim, without support, that buildings there are primarily concrete and not wood. However, even for concrete buildings, it is the contents that burn and provide the fuel load. We are actually doing inventories of actual buildings to get this right.
5. “A dry atmosphere was utilized, and pyro-cumulus impacts or precipitation from pyro-cumulonimbus were not considered.” Thus they eliminate a major source of buoyancy that would loft the soot, and latent heat of condensation.
6. Their simulations of fire were only run for 40 minutes, and they did not actually model firestorms.
In summary, Reisner et al. (2018) modeled
the wrong type of fire (they should have modeled a mass fire),
in an area with lower fuel loading than we considered (a suburb not a city),
they omitted factors known to be important to smoke lofting (latent heat release),
they used too high wind speeds, and
they didn’t model the full duration of the event.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/talks/NuclearWinter109Lamont.pptx
I read their reasoning is that any nuclear weapon will create a firestorm. So the size of the weapon is almost irrelevant. It is true that a smaller weapon created the Hiroshima firestorm. Therefore they argue that even a Pakistan-India conflict would generate enough firestorms and generate enough aerosols to disrupt agriculture and kill billions.
I do not believe modern cities would firestorm as easily as Hiroshima which had mostly wooden structures. Most concrete structures would collapse and smother material inside them extinguishing fires created from the initial flash. To get Tokyo to firestorm a special weapon was created and used under ideal conditions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uPteVZyF4U0
The Dresden firestorm was also engineered and consisted of two waves of airplanes. The first dropped blockbuster bombs to open up the concrete structures to expose the flammable materials inside. The second wave dropped incendiary bombs to ignite the exposed materials.
However, let’s assume that every nuclear weapon creates a firestorm. Also I will assume the fires cannot be put out due to the fallout dangers after a nuclear attack which suppress firefighting.
I also trust their atmospheric modeling and famine simulations for different levels of soot in the stratosphere which are here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
The model focuses on soot, black carbon, which is lifted into the stratosphere with the pyro-cumulonimbus cloud that forms with a firestorm. They argue the black carbon does not rainout but instead absorbs sunlight and is lifted even higher into the stratosphere where it persists for years.
Soot will auto-ignite at the temperatures required to generate firestorms. Above 500C with oxygen present it will turn into carbon dioxide. They also argue that cities have more plastics that generate soot and even that the asphalt will burn. All the plastics are petroleum products which at high enough temperatures and in the presence of oxygen, like in a firestorm will turn into water vapor and carbon dioxide.
I suspect the pyro-cumulonimbus clouds are mostly water vapor and a mixture of other aerosols which are less efficient at absorbing sunlight. There should be enough water vapor that condenses around any black carbon at those altitudes.
A forest fire, like in Australia, that created the pyro-cumulonimbus clouds they reference was created in dry conditions with extremely dry eucalyptus trees. It did not boil lakes, rivers or the standing water left in destroyed urban infrastructure. Cities are relatively wet, fire-sprinklers are everywhere.