[HN Gopher] Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction
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Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction
Author : wellokthen
Score : 33 points
Date : 2020-11-12 21:47 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| shams93 wrote:
| What about the Nuclear Winter effect? I would think going like
| 100 years without being able to grow food would cause everything
| but the heartiest life forms to die out including humans who are
| much harder to keep going than simple bacteria.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article: their point is that basically,
| it's unlikely, and even if it happened some people somewhere
| would survive.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I believe the statement was more political than actual science.
| Let's not blow the world up ok? Radiation is bad. Let's just
| agree to keep some semblance of respect for human life.
| dimitar wrote:
| There are more factors in a realistic nuclear war:
|
| - Quite a few nuclear weapons will be spent on military sites,
| which are often in low-population density areas.
|
| - Quite a few nuclear weapons will be used to destroy other
| nuclear weapons.
|
| - Nuclear fratricide, or nukes from the same side damaging each
| other in ill-coordinated explosions
|
| - Air defence destroying at least some missiles and especially
| planes.
|
| - Some bombs will be duds and fail to detonate due to bad
| maintenance.
| tshaddox wrote:
| When I think about nuclear war leading to human extinction, the
| first thing that comes to mind isn't any of those 3 mechanisms,
| but rather economic damage. Not economic damage as in "I lost my
| retirement investment," but as in "we can't produce enough food."
| I'd be worried about even much smaller and less deadly nuclear
| wars leading to massive civil unrest and breakdowns in large-
| scale social institutions and economies. Mass starvation would be
| the biggest killer. But I suppose that still wouldn't likely lead
| to absolute human extinction, but it could certainly lead to a
| future civilization that is largely unrecognizable to us humans
| accustomed to industrial or even agricultural societies.
| codekilla wrote:
| What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there
| is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay
| threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI.
|
| I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill _every single
| human instantly_. So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant
| civilization collapse.... _full stop_. Should we forget about
| disarmament?....guess not every single person theoretically
| dies....as in the AGI apocalypse fantasy land scenario....so let
| 's not worry too much.
| reitzensteinm wrote:
| Humanity will survive. You, dear reader, will not.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Civilisation can be rebuilt. Focus on existential threats over
| far more likely civilisation collapse threats is done by those
| who view unrealised potential as loss. So it's 7 billion humans
| vs the trillions that could exist if we keep spreading and
| growing and start colonising other planets.
| analog31 wrote:
| It adds to our growing collection of factoids. Not everything
| needs to be useful. At least the article arrived at its
| conclusion without any Bayes theater.
| mattbgates wrote:
| It may not wipe out human life, but it will severely disrupt the
| natural processes of human beings for a while, especially those
| who remain close to the nuclear zone.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with the arguments against this article.
| Obviously we want to avoid it as much as possible but it's still
| interesting from a philosophical point of view to know it will
| not be the extinction of all human life. For me it seems very
| likely there will be some nuclear conflict at some point in the
| next 10,000+ years, and it's nice to know some fragment of
| humanity will survive
| gcheong wrote:
| Not sure extinction would be worse than the amount of suffering
| living through a full scale nuclear war would entail.
| greesil wrote:
| I really am tired of my tech career, and don't think I would mind
| trying to learn subsistence farming whilst trying to avoid
| radiation poisoning.
|
| For more information, please consult "Nuclear War Survival
| Skills" by Cresson H. Kearny.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/094248701X
| mixedCase wrote:
| Well the good news is that you can start right now and don't
| even have to deal with radiation poisoning.
| 2Xheadpalm wrote:
| Extinction of the human race, maybe not BUT it would be the end
| of life on planet Earth as we know it. It would be a shame if
| extinction is not the outcome, any species _stupid_ enough to
| attempt to dominate its political and national 'ego' in such a
| manner deserves elimination from the gene pool of possible
| species choices.
| ghostcluster wrote:
| Between the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first gulf war, and many
| more country-sized forest fire events, we've learned that Nuclear
| Winter is not a likely scenario. In fact, the very scientists who
| coined the term in the 1980s have backed away from it.
|
| Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout
| would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not
| to _mention_ the human toll. But extinction level? Unlikely.
| lwigo wrote:
| I dunno if I would describe the supply chain as "resilient" --
| I honestly think we just got lucky that things so far haven't
| been worse.
| save_ferris wrote:
| To be fair, large grocery store chains were beginning
| preparations as far back as December 2019, which gave them time
| to cut out less-essential SKUs and increase production for more
| essential products. Big businesses with contacts in China had
| plenty of heads up before the disease went global.
|
| Depending on the radioactive exposure caused by a nuclear war,
| the impact on the supply chain could theoretically be much more
| catastrophic than a pandemic. If major water supplies or
| agricultural infrastructure were tainted, for example, the
| results would be devastating.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Given how much crop land would be ruined, it is likely that
| global starvation would end most of humanity and not much of
| civilization would survive. Sure there would be people
| wondering around a hundred years later, but they might not know
| how to read, write, speak real languages, or reason abstractly.
| 99% of humans starving would make for some crazy times.
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