That's something from Fallout (3?) right? I tried playing Fallout 3. Couldn't keep playing - it was too depressing. I know it's supposed to be tongue in cheek, but it is honestly a little too realistic for me to deal with.Barbas said:I think you made the thread even more depressing. Like Caesar's Legion [http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110310031905/villains/images/a/ae/Vulpes.jpg]-level depressing. I think I need some ice cream. :c
That was cool, thanks for the link.albino boo said:You might want to have fun with this http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ . It shows the effects of blast, put over a likely target and see if you survive
Not as much a you might think, generally a shared catastrophe brings out the best in people. Japan, after the tsunami, didn't have that sort of issues.OctoberFox said:I would obviously die, just not certain if quickly or slowly. As bad as people are to each other when things are well, when they go bad people get a lot worse. The police and governing bodies in Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, for example. I'm not a killer of men, not in principle alone, but in just sheer force of will. If it came to it, in a post-nuclear wasteland where it's every man for himself I would get murdered in a hurry, of this I've not doubt, especially since I live in America, where other people are quite a bit shootier than I.
I don't think you understand the profound effects of such a scenario. This could cause food crops to fail en masse. Cause mass death to plant life, and by extension, animal life. This is not something you shrug off.super_mega_ultra said:"could have a profound and severe effect on the climate causing cold weather and reduced sunlight for a period of months or even years by the emission of large amounts of the firestorms smoke and soot into the Earth's stratosphere"General Winter said:I would have to disagree.super_mega_ultra said:Nothing would fundamentally change after a nuclear war. The radioactivity would be concentrated in small areas and would be gone within 48 hours. Only very concentrated population centers and military targets (troop concentrations and bunkers) would be hit. There is nothing "end of the world" about nuclear bombs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
The main problem with nuclear war for most people would not be the nukes themselves, it would be the dangerous aftereffects.
Back to the original post, my city would probably be targeted, but I'm far enough from the center that I would probably not die from the initial hit.
In other words, it could making heating your house cost a little more and the price of food go up a little (due to the horrors of "reduced sunlight").
As nice as that would be, we unfortunately do know how volatile small changes in climate can be worldwide. For example while a rise of temperature by a few degrees might have little to no effect in a given region, if that change is worldwide the effects are drastic. As for if the sunlight is getting reduced, we also have data on that. A decade or two ago a volcano went off (I believe it was Mt saint helens), and the effects of that are still being felt today in places all over the world. That was one volcano in one part of the world affecting areas for thousands on miles. If nukes were hitting globally, those effects would not raise food prices by a small amount, it would cause a global food shortage.super_mega_ultra said:I don't think you understand the uncertainty of such claims. There isn't even certainty that anything will change, much less a mass extinction. It could just as well be that the reduced sunlight just causes plants to grow a little slower, somewhat reducing yields of fields and making food cost a little more.General Winter said:I don't think you understand the profound effects of such a scenario. This could cause food crops to fail en masse. Cause mass death to plant life, and by extension, animal life. This is not something you shrug off.
While it is correct that the effects of reduced sunlight could be drastic, I am led to believe that a nuclear war is unlikely to create that situation, at least not to any great extent. The original models for nuclear winter were, I believe, severely flawed...possibly this was intentional, to scare people off nuclear war (there seems to be a lot of misguided attempts to do this) or possibly it was because it wasn't possible to make a suitably accurate model back in the 80s.Dr. Crawver said:As nice as that would be, we unfortunately do know how volatile small changes in climate can be worldwide. For example while a rise of temperature by a few degrees might have little to no effect in a given region, if that change is worldwide the effects are drastic. As for if the sunlight is getting reduced, we also have data on that. A decade or two ago a volcano went off (I believe it was Mt saint helens), and the effects of that are still being felt today in places all over the world. That was one volcano in one part of the world affecting areas for thousands on miles. If nukes were hitting globally, those effects would not raise food prices by a small amount, it would cause a global food shortage.
You could argue that since certain areas are unhurt, it'll be fine. You might have a nearby farm or something. Just remember that in the UK and US, the vast majority of food we consume is imported. That luxury would die immediately as countries will safeguard their supplies to feed their own people.