Sure. But like Buck Rogers death rays a 100% effective ABM system remains an impossibility.

I'd be inclined to agree, as with most defence systems no sooner than you've built the mouse-trap, they've designed a bigger mouse, and that's part of what this cobalt torpedo nuke thing is about, creating a bigger mouse so that Russias retaliatory options are not limited by the American ABM system.

Oh, and the Buck Rogers death ray?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

Not so far off, from H.G. Wells's 'Heat Ray' of 1898 to todays chemical lasers, never say something is truly 'impossible'. :03:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmoldX1wKYQ

Consequences of a regional/continental nuclear major exchange tend to be global. They wander around the planet and sooner or later affect every region and place. When a big volcano in today'S Korea broke out around a thosuand years ago, it darkend the sky above Japan with clouds of ashes. Chernobyl radiation was measurable practically everywhere in Europe . The shock wave of the Tsar bomb wandered three times around the planet, they write. A major exchange is no regional thing. In the region you just count the most craters. But nuclear weapons go far beyond just making craters.

Yet you do not view those effects rationally. They do not guarantee extinction or even denial of areas for prolonged time (something we have to build new specialist tools for, hence this thread) for example people live and even participate in agriculture in the exclusion zone.

You can survive those effects and begin reconstruction after.

The only real problem is restoring agriculture.

You may want to live in that world. I don't.

Well then I suggest that you prepare for suicide, simultanious shot to the head and intake of cyanide pill appears to be the way to go.

If you live in an area close to a potential target there is no need to keep spare gazoline or trust worthy men to give you a burrial - the firestorm should do the trick.

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/limit...ing-radiation/

http://www.ippnw.org/nuclear-famine.html

http://www.icanw.org/the-facts/catas...uclear-famine/

As I said restoring agricultural production is the only real challenge.

Those people must be completely unbiased.
This depends on preparation measures.

While fallout shelter programs are common (ie Swiss and other European countries) it is only one third of the solution (and that is assuming that in addition to the short term shelters you have pre attack dispersion and post attack evacuation programs) - you still need extensive reserves (and not only for food and other nesseseties - you also need to store semi finished goods, means of production, raw materials and so on) and restorative measures and means (ability to restore transportation and communications, restart industrial production post evacuation).

The only historic example of a such comprehensive system I can think of was late USSR, but the costs of such a system were enourmous.

p.s. for context regarding the effects of low scale regional nuclear exchanges and their perceptions by major powers - US went ahead with it's B61 modernisation program. That program is desighned to make the B61s usable in limited scenarios. Makes me wonder if USG is nuke loving crazies then :)

Could always grow mushrooms in the Moscow metro tunnels. :O:

Yes, we can do that, just need to avoid the ones growing outside - as they accumulate radiotoxins.

I think potatoes are viewed as one of the better post attack crops.

:) Is that a good or bad thing in your opinion?

There's a lot of talk about the effects of a nuclear war, about the 'nuclear winter' situation, the spread and concentration of radiation and so on and so forth. Some people theorise that an exchange between India and Pakistan (which is more likely to happen than one between Russia and the US) could have a knock-on effect to global climate. It's hard to know for certain, but certainly as you say, there have been historical events which have had drastic consequences on the world. I recall that when Mount Pinatubo went up in 1991 it knocked down global temperatures by 0.5c and temporarily increased ozone depletion. So I think it would be inevitable that there would be an impact on global temperatures and atmospheric conditions. Primarily I think it would be the remains of all the cities being thrown into the atmosphere and the smoke from all the fires that would do it.

Come to think of it, with a gradual increase in global temperatures bringing about an increase in wildfires, particularly in places like America and Australia...I wonder whether we'll ever reach a point where wildfires are able to create a small nuclear winter. :hmmm:

Either which way:

https://media.tenor.co/images/068156...858e/tenor.gif

Here you go.

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warco...ontonsofsmoke/

Depends on how you look at it.

If effects of even a limited nuclear exchange are perceived as catastrophic, total and final from one side it strengthens the deterence by those weapons due to the perceived costs of using those weapons and thus improves the strategic stability which is a good thing.
On the other hand it can undermine the perception of assured use of such weapons by the enemy, which in turn undermines deterence value of such weapons and thus undermines strategic stability, which is a bad thing.

Sadly I am not qualified to say which of those effects is more significant.

I remember an academic work when instead of ignoring the greenhouse effect caused by the firestorms they ignored the light obscuration one and got the so called "nuclear summer". Was a nice change of pace. However, let me bring up some context:

Or less than the B61-12 stockpile in Europe. The idea behind the B61-12 upgrade package was to decrease that weapon's use threshhold as well as to improve it's counter-force capabilities.

Still less than absolute Soviet losses during GPW (27M I believe?) and even less than relative Soviet losses during GPW due to the larger populations of modern day India and Pakistan. The shock effect however would still be there due to the shorter time frame.

Then there is agriculture relevant stuff which is the real problem with any nuclear scenarios, but then we survived the pre industrial era somehow.