This post is one of my favorites on nuclear winter. I like your line of reasoning and summarization of the research. I wish this post was longer.
I do believe there are a few points that may change your assumptions.
Fuel Loading and Moderate Damage Zones
According to FEMA the moderate damage zone where buildings are left standing with their interiors exposed due to strong blast damage are the most likely to burn uncontrollably. The severe damage zone is entirely reduced to rubble and unlikely to burn. The light damage zone is also unlikely to burn. The moderate damage zone is sandwiched between the two zones that do not burn.
You correctly point out a firestorm develops when the winds feed it with oxygen evenly from the outside. This raises the temperature at the center and lofts soot (or maybe just water vapor) high into the stratosphere. This means a firestorm burns from the outside towards the center. A nuclear induced firestorm burns from the moderate damage zone towards the epicenter of the unburnable severe damage zone.
Would this leave just a ring of fire? A ring with a larger inner radius and smaller outer radius? I am skeptical that this ring can firestorm to create pyrocumulonimbus clouds if it is missing an intensely hot center. If it does firestorm then the total amount of combusting material is significantly reduced.
You also mention that there are redundancies to ensure a second strike capability with enough warheads to pound the rubble. Also that NY and DC far exceed the fuel loading for a firestorm.
It does make sense considering how all nuclear war articles include nukemap. I believe the constant use of nukemap has warped our intuition into imagining single strikes on cities. I have noticed references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are frequent in the literature which were also single strikes and then we extend that logic to a modern nuclear exchange.
Zoom in on NY and DC in the large nuclear war simulator below. They are gone. They are cindered into a 100% severe damage zone. They will not burn they will be flattened.
The moderate damage zones will likely extend into suburbs surrounding the dense skyscrapers at the cores of large cities. The average fuel loading of an American city is 14 to 21 kg/m^2. That is below the threshold to firestorm.
Nuclear Winter Changed Public Policy For Better and For Worse
Carl Sagan created nuclear winter and planted into the public consciousness. He was absolutely against nuclear weapons. Sagan used early climate models and his prior knowledge from working on, “nuking the moon”, to write a convincing story. That narrative is nuclear war is extinction through the same mechanism that killed the dinosaurs.
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”—Sagan
Brian Toon’s thesis advisor was Carl Sagan. The original Toon and Sagan paper scared everyone. Nuclear winter now is a household name due to Sagan’s celebrity. The theory heavily influenced arms talks. The fear of nuclear winter was used by each side to justify reducing their stockpiles. It made the world safer.
Why does everyone agree when you get 150Tg of soot into the stratosphere that we all die? Because that climate model was developed by thousands of scientists and is a standard climate science tool. How many nuclear winter researchers are there? Maybe five to ten? Did they know 150Tg of soot would kill everyone before they began arguing that nuclear weapons will put 150Tg of soot into the atmosphere? Probably.
You hit the nail on the head here. There are too many uncertainties so it is easy to argue a particular viewpoint. There is not enough research into it or maybe no one else can replicate their results.
If reducing nuclear stockpiles is the good thing then the bad thing is nuclear winter directly lead to global warming denialism. We traded one apocalypse for another. It is important for climate scientists to be seen as unbiased and Sagan had an axe to grind. The groups that initially challenged nuclear winter later started a publicity campaign to spread global warming denialism.
I have a suspicion you are not convinced that MAD holds forever. If MAD held forever then the probability of nuclear war is 0%. So why worry? This is what the majority of people believe. If MAD never worked then eventually there will be a nuclear war with enough weapons to annihilate everyone. MAD demands there are enough weapons to be fired simultaneously.
But what if there is a fuzzy area? How many people have to die to deter someone from attacking? What if we can achieve MAD through a second order climate effect? Then war planners who buy into peace through apocalyptic levels of deterrence are satisfied. This can be seen in the Sagan clip below when he first introduced nuclear winter to the public and before he published it.
Now someday when MAD fails we may not go extinct. We may only lose half the population. If 150 million deaths does not stop a nuclear war then it is unlikely any number of deaths will deter one side from starting a nuclear war.
Schrodinger’s Nuclear Winter
Obviously I think nuclear winter is a big fat lie. I might be wrong though.
But if I can tell someone believes in MAD then I will cite the Nature article that nuclear winter will kill everyone. Then ask why are we wasting more tax payer dollars on large arsenals? Why get into an arms race when the “science” says just 100 Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons is enough to kill everyone and achieve MAD? Maybe we just need to have 200 weapons for MAD and redundancy.
That is the only way to win this nuclear war game.
This post is one of my favorites on nuclear winter. I like your line of reasoning and summarization of the research. I wish this post was longer.
I do believe there are a few points that may change your assumptions.
Fuel Loading and Moderate Damage Zones
According to FEMA the moderate damage zone where buildings are left standing with their interiors exposed due to strong blast damage are the most likely to burn uncontrollably. The severe damage zone is entirely reduced to rubble and unlikely to burn. The light damage zone is also unlikely to burn. The moderate damage zone is sandwiched between the two zones that do not burn.
https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_nuc-detonation-planning-guide.pdf#page32
You correctly point out a firestorm develops when the winds feed it with oxygen evenly from the outside. This raises the temperature at the center and lofts soot (or maybe just water vapor) high into the stratosphere. This means a firestorm burns from the outside towards the center. A nuclear induced firestorm burns from the moderate damage zone towards the epicenter of the unburnable severe damage zone.
Would this leave just a ring of fire? A ring with a larger inner radius and smaller outer radius? I am skeptical that this ring can firestorm to create pyrocumulonimbus clouds if it is missing an intensely hot center. If it does firestorm then the total amount of combusting material is significantly reduced.
You also mention that there are redundancies to ensure a second strike capability with enough warheads to pound the rubble. Also that NY and DC far exceed the fuel loading for a firestorm.
It does make sense considering how all nuclear war articles include nukemap. I believe the constant use of nukemap has warped our intuition into imagining single strikes on cities. I have noticed references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are frequent in the literature which were also single strikes and then we extend that logic to a modern nuclear exchange.
Zoom in on NY and DC in the large nuclear war simulator below. They are gone. They are cindered into a 100% severe damage zone. They will not burn they will be flattened.
https://www.nuclearwarmap.com/map01.html
The moderate damage zones will likely extend into suburbs surrounding the dense skyscrapers at the cores of large cities. The average fuel loading of an American city is 14 to 21 kg/m^2. That is below the threshold to firestorm.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10109450/
Nuclear Winter Changed Public Policy For Better and For Worse
Carl Sagan created nuclear winter and planted into the public consciousness. He was absolutely against nuclear weapons. Sagan used early climate models and his prior knowledge from working on, “nuking the moon”, to write a convincing story. That narrative is nuclear war is extinction through the same mechanism that killed the dinosaurs.
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”—Sagan
Brian Toon’s thesis advisor was Carl Sagan. The original Toon and Sagan paper scared everyone. Nuclear winter now is a household name due to Sagan’s celebrity. The theory heavily influenced arms talks. The fear of nuclear winter was used by each side to justify reducing their stockpiles. It made the world safer.
Why does everyone agree when you get 150Tg of soot into the stratosphere that we all die? Because that climate model was developed by thousands of scientists and is a standard climate science tool. How many nuclear winter researchers are there? Maybe five to ten? Did they know 150Tg of soot would kill everyone before they began arguing that nuclear weapons will put 150Tg of soot into the atmosphere? Probably.
You hit the nail on the head here. There are too many uncertainties so it is easy to argue a particular viewpoint. There is not enough research into it or maybe no one else can replicate their results.
If reducing nuclear stockpiles is the good thing then the bad thing is nuclear winter directly lead to global warming denialism. We traded one apocalypse for another. It is important for climate scientists to be seen as unbiased and Sagan had an axe to grind. The groups that initially challenged nuclear winter later started a publicity campaign to spread global warming denialism.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/the-atomic-origins-of-climate-science
White Lies and MAD
I have a suspicion you are not convinced that MAD holds forever. If MAD held forever then the probability of nuclear war is 0%. So why worry? This is what the majority of people believe. If MAD never worked then eventually there will be a nuclear war with enough weapons to annihilate everyone. MAD demands there are enough weapons to be fired simultaneously.
But what if there is a fuzzy area? How many people have to die to deter someone from attacking? What if we can achieve MAD through a second order climate effect? Then war planners who buy into peace through apocalyptic levels of deterrence are satisfied. This can be seen in the Sagan clip below when he first introduced nuclear winter to the public and before he published it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34&pp=ygUYY2FybCBzYWdhbiB0aGUgZGF5IGFmdGVy&t=14m
Now someday when MAD fails we may not go extinct. We may only lose half the population. If 150 million deaths does not stop a nuclear war then it is unlikely any number of deaths will deter one side from starting a nuclear war.
Schrodinger’s Nuclear Winter
Obviously I think nuclear winter is a big fat lie. I might be wrong though.
But if I can tell someone believes in MAD then I will cite the Nature article that nuclear winter will kill everyone. Then ask why are we wasting more tax payer dollars on large arsenals? Why get into an arms race when the “science” says just 100 Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons is enough to kill everyone and achieve MAD? Maybe we just need to have 200 weapons for MAD and redundancy.
That is the only way to win this nuclear war game.