Nuts and Bolts of Nuclear War (split from Ukraine Reaction thread)

[Hermit]

For example, have you looked at the impact of just the two little atomic bombs that wiped out Japanese cities?

Yes, I have.

They were similar to the impact of the firebombing of other Japanese cities.

The most significant tactical difference is that a single aircraft could do the work that previously required about a thousand.

Strategically, the atomic weapons were incredibly expensive. The cost per enemy casualty (even given the generous assumption that all of the victims qualified as 'enemies') made them easily the most expensive weapons deployed up to that date.

Politically and diplomatically, they were a huge success, in that they almost certainly ended the war, and absolutely certainly cowed the Soviet Union to the diplomatic benefit (at least until the Soviets got their own bomb) of the USA, Britain, and France.

Have you looked at the impact of conventional bombing on cities in WWII?

That nuclear bombs are horrific isn't really a question. But the assertion that they are uniquely or exceptionally horrific is highly dubious. Nuclear weapons are just a particularly expensive, tactically easy, and diplomatically thorny way of achieving something that humanity had already demonstrated the ability to do before they were invented: Kill lots of people and destroy the stuff they built.

They're different in many ways, but it's all quantitative, or psychological. They're qualitatively not different from any other weapons.

You seem to assume that the readers of the post approve of the "firebombing of other cities" and see this as a mere tactical question rather than a moral issue. The destruction of an entire city, civilian and military districts alike, is a moral travesty no matter what tools you use to accomplish it. But unlike smaller arms, that is the only way that nuclear bombs work: they destroy everything, and they make it easy to do so quickly with the press of a button. This is not a good thing in any way.

You speak so casually about the diplomatic benefits of state terrorism and horrific war crimes, but what about the diplomatic costs? Do you think Australia will be able to avoid the political karma of Nagasaki forever? You think East Asians have forgotten how glibly the Western powers destroyed two cities in minutes to end a war? You think that doesn't make our hegemony the greatest threat to their own, the first target in any future bid for global power? You only have five cities of size in your country. In a nuclear conflict, that's five cities, five bombs, and five hours, to kill or grievously injure more than half of the population. No one should have this power. But since this cannot be undone, at least no one should ever make light of its severity.

I see the tower of the Hornet every day I go into the city, and it's not a far walk to the coastal batteries left behind from that war. The Hornet saved your country from eventual naval invasion at Midway, and the batteries would have made a similar invasion of my city a severe challenge... in a conventional war. In a nuclear war, neither the Hornet nor the batteries would have made any difference whatsoever. One plane, that's all it would have taken. There is no upside to such warfare.

I agree with everything in your post except for the bolded bit. A Japanese invasion of Australia was never on the cards. Elements of the Japanese navy proposed it early in 1942, but the Imperial Japanese Army and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo rejected it on the grounds of being unfeasible given Australia's geography and the strength of the Allied defences.

The bombing of Darwin and Broome, the incursion of the Sydney Harbour by midget-subs and the battles along Papua New Guinea's Kokoda track were not opening moves for an invasion of Australia. They were operations chiefly aimed at manipulating the Australian government into keeping its military forces on the Australian continent rather than where it would make a difference - the South Pacific theatre of war.

Luckily, the ruse did not work. Had it been successful, the US would have lost WWII. [/tonguefirmlyincheek]

This article pretty much destroys the Australian invasion canard, but it persists because too many Americans still insist on biggening the significance and rôle of the US's part in defeating the Axis.

 

[Jarhyn]

For example, have you looked at the impact of just the two little atomic bombs that wiped out Japanese cities?

Yes, I have.

They were similar to the impact of the firebombing of other Japanese cities.

The most significant tactical difference is that a single aircraft could do the work that previously required about a thousand.

Strategically, the atomic weapons were incredibly expensive. The cost per enemy casualty (even given the generous assumption that all of the victims qualified as 'enemies') made them easily the most expensive weapons deployed up to that date.

Politically and diplomatically, they were a huge success, in that they almost certainly ended the war, and absolutely certainly cowed the Soviet Union to the diplomatic benefit (at least until the Soviets got their own bomb) of the USA, Britain, and France.

Have you looked at the impact of conventional bombing on cities in WWII?

That nuclear bombs are horrific isn't really a question. But the assertion that they are uniquely or exceptionally horrific is highly dubious. Nuclear weapons are just a particularly expensive, tactically easy, and diplomatically thorny way of achieving something that humanity had already demonstrated the ability to do before they were invented: Kill lots of people and destroy the stuff they built.

They're different in many ways, but it's all quantitative, or psychological. They're qualitatively not different from any other weapons.

You seem to assume that the readers of the post approve of the "firebombing of other cities" and see this as a mere tactical question rather than a moral issue. The destruction of an entire city, civilian and military districts alike, is a moral travesty no matter what tools you use to accomplish it. But unlike smaller arms, that is the only way that nuclear bombs work: they destroy everything, and they make it easy to do so quickly with the press of a button. This is not a good thing in any way.

You speak so casually about the diplomatic benefits of state terrorism and horrific war crimes, but what about the diplomatic costs? Do you think Australia will be able to avoid the political karma of Nagasaki forever? You think East Asians have forgotten how glibly the Western powers destroyed two cities in minutes to end a war? You think that doesn't make our hegemony the greatest threat to their own, the first target in any future bid for global power? You only have five cities of size in your country. In a nuclear conflict, that's five cities, five bombs, and five hours, to kill or grievously injure more than half of the population. No one should have this power. But since this cannot be undone, at least no one should ever make light of its severity.

I see the tower of the Hornet every day I go into the city, and it's not a far walk to the coastal batteries left behind from that war. The Hornet saved your country from eventual naval invasion at Midway, and the batteries would have made a similar invasion of my city a severe challenge... in a conventional war. In a nuclear war, neither the Hornet nor the batteries would have made any difference whatsoever. One plane, that's all it would have taken. There is no upside to such warfare.

The reality is, just like a MIRV weapon, it only takes a single delivery to make a bad day with a nuke, there are thousands of nukes out there, and it's really hard to stop even a single hypersonic ICBM.

The reality is that a modern nuke is really more like 20 modern nukes in a bundle. It inverts the game theory of bombing from "lots of bombers maybe a little damage" to "one bomb, really hard to stop, splits into many bombers post-arrival, let's see how many children of it we can get to land"

 

[steve_bank]

As to fire bombing in WWII, it was a war of annihilation and subjugation. It was no less than the future of humanity.

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program. Post war it was found they were not close to a bomb, but nobody knew that. Hitler had ballistic missiles and was working on an ICBM. IMO Werner Von Braun should have been hung at Rosenberg. Instead he became an American space hero.. If Hitler had a nuclear bomb England would have been destroyed.

If you are being attacked by someone trying to kill you, do you ponder the morality of your response or do you do what ir takes to survive?

I don't knoe what is being taught in high school and college today. I woder if people realize how our modern liberties were secured.

 

[Politesse]

For example, have you looked at the impact of just the two little atomic bombs that wiped out Japanese cities?

Yes, I have.

They were similar to the impact of the firebombing of other Japanese cities.

The most significant tactical difference is that a single aircraft could do the work that previously required about a thousand.

Strategically, the atomic weapons were incredibly expensive. The cost per enemy casualty (even given the generous assumption that all of the victims qualified as 'enemies') made them easily the most expensive weapons deployed up to that date.

Politically and diplomatically, they were a huge success, in that they almost certainly ended the war, and absolutely certainly cowed the Soviet Union to the diplomatic benefit (at least until the Soviets got their own bomb) of the USA, Britain, and France.

Have you looked at the impact of conventional bombing on cities in WWII?

That nuclear bombs are horrific isn't really a question. But the assertion that they are uniquely or exceptionally horrific is highly dubious. Nuclear weapons are just a particularly expensive, tactically easy, and diplomatically thorny way of achieving something that humanity had already demonstrated the ability to do before they were invented: Kill lots of people and destroy the stuff they built.

They're different in many ways, but it's all quantitative, or psychological. They're qualitatively not different from any other weapons.

You seem to assume that the readers of the post approve of the "firebombing of other cities" and see this as a mere tactical question rather than a moral issue. The destruction of an entire city, civilian and military districts alike, is a moral travesty no matter what tools you use to accomplish it. But unlike smaller arms, that is the only way that nuclear bombs work: they destroy everything, and they make it easy to do so quickly with the press of a button. This is not a good thing in any way.

You speak so casually about the diplomatic benefits of state terrorism and horrific war crimes, but what about the diplomatic costs? Do you think Australia will be able to avoid the political karma of Nagasaki forever? You think East Asians have forgotten how glibly the Western powers destroyed two cities in minutes to end a war? You think that doesn't make our hegemony the greatest threat to their own, the first target in any future bid for global power? You only have five cities of size in your country. In a nuclear conflict, that's five cities, five bombs, and five hours, to kill or grievously injure more than half of the population. No one should have this power. But since this cannot be undone, at least no one should ever make light of its severity.

I see the tower of the Hornet every day I go into the city, and it's not a far walk to the coastal batteries left behind from that war. The Hornet saved your country from eventual naval invasion at Midway, and the batteries would have made a similar invasion of my city a severe challenge... in a conventional war. In a nuclear war, neither the Hornet nor the batteries would have made any difference whatsoever. One plane, that's all it would have taken. There is no upside to such warfare.

I agree with everything in your post except for the bolded bit. A Japanese invasion of Australia was never on the cards. Elements of the Japanese navy proposed it early in 1942, but the Imperial Japanese Army and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo rejected it on the grounds of being unfeasible given Australia's geography and the strength of the Allied defences.

The bombing of Darwin and Broome, the incursion of the Sydney Harbour by midget-subs and the battles along Papua New Guinea's Kokoda track were not opening moves for an invasion of Australia. They were operations chiefly aimed at manipulating the Australian government into keeping its military forces on the Australian continent rather than where it would make a difference - the South Pacific theatre of war.

Luckily, the ruse did not work. Had it been successful, the US would have lost WWII. [/tonguefirmlyincheek]

This article pretty much destroys the Australian invasion canard, but it persists because too many Americans still insist on biggening the significance and rôle of the US's part in defeating the Axis.

That's fine, it's not really the most important point in the post from my view. The wreckage of war, seventy years on, may be subject to historical argument (about which I honestly know very little that I didn't learn from informational signs at said museum, a known source of propaganda if it comes to that), but the problem is that its all still there to argue about.

 

[TV and credit cards]

As to fire bombing in WWII, it was a war of annihilation and subjugation. It was no less than the future of humanity.

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program. Post war it was found they were not close to a bomb, but nobody knew that. Hitler had ballistic missiles and was working on an ICBM. IMO Werner Von Braun should have been hung at Rosenberg. Instead he became an American space hero.. If Hitler had a nuclear bomb England would have been destroyed.

If you are being attacked by someone trying to kill you, do you ponder the morality of your response or do you do what ir takes to survive?

I don't knoe what is being taught in high school and college today. I woder if people realize how our modern liberties were secured.

I had similar thoughts: "While y'all philosophize over the morality of the situation, the rest of us will be shooting back."

 

[Jarhyn]

As to fire bombing in WWII, it was a war of annihilation and subjugation. It was no less than the future of humanity.

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program. Post war it was found they were not close to a bomb, but nobody knew that. Hitler had ballistic missiles and was working on an ICBM. IMO Werner Von Braun should have been hung at Rosenberg. Instead he became an American space hero.. If Hitler had a nuclear bomb England would have been destroyed.

If you are being attacked by someone trying to kill you, do you ponder the morality of your response or do you do what ir takes to survive?

I don't knoe what is being taught in high school and college today. I woder if people realize how our modern liberties were secured.

I had similar thoughts: "While y'all philosophize over the morality of the situation, the rest of us will be shooting back."

Some of us ponder the morality of the situation because some of us have a lot more options as to what "shooting back" looks like.

Do you shoot back with the gun?
Do you shoot back with the tank?
Do you shoot back with the mortar launcher?
Do you shoot back with the missile?
Do you shoot back with the bomber?
Do you shoot back with a nuke?
Do you shoot back with autonomous AI drone weapons?
Do you shoot back with...

Well, there are a lot of things to shoot back with, and SOMEONE has to ponder over what that is. And yes, when the war is over and nobody is trying to shoot you for now, you will need to sue for peace, and what you get as a response to that offer hinges entirely on how much you pondered the morality of your actions.

You can't unmake a weapon, and you can't un-nuke a city or country.

 

[Hermit]

As to fire bombing in WWII, it was a war of annihilation and subjugation. It was no less than the future of humanity.

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program. Post war it was found they were not close to a bomb, but nobody knew that. Hitler had ballistic missiles and was working on an ICBM. IMO Werner Von Braun should have been hung at Rosenberg. Instead he became an American space hero.. If Hitler had a nuclear bomb England would have been destroyed.

If you are being attacked by someone trying to kill you, do you ponder the morality of your response or do you do what ir takes to survive?

I don't knoe what is being taught in high school and college today. I woder if people realize how our modern liberties were secured.

I had similar thoughts: "While y'all philosophize over the morality of the situation, the rest of us will be shooting back."

All well and good, but 83 years ago it took millions of personnel, many more million pieces of explosive ordnance and five years to destroy one rogue country at the cost of 55 million lives. WWIII will be a push-button affair destroying at least two continents, Europe especially so, and indiscriminately killing hundreds of million humans in an hour.

Nuclear war will not be limited to knocking out major military installations with surgical precision. Every airport, every harbour, every existing and suspected command centre and as many barracks as possible between the west coast of France and the Ural mountain range will be hit with whatever each side can throw at the other. The survivors will have no infrastructure left to subsist on, and even if the southern hemisphere finishes up relatively unscathed by things that go bang, its population will have to make some drastic adjustments, to put it mildly. The global economy, which we people downunder depend on, will have ceased to exist.

It therefore becomes more important to seek out ways that avoid outright war between major powers than it ever was. There will be no winners if we fail. Those who advocate we hit first, hit hard and hope for the best are MAD fucking idiots living in La La Land.

 

[TV and credit cards]

As to fire bombing in WWII, it was a war of annihilation and subjugation. It was no less than the future of humanity.

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program. Post war it was found they were not close to a bomb, but nobody knew that. Hitler had ballistic missiles and was working on an ICBM. IMO Werner Von Braun should have been hung at Rosenberg. Instead he became an American space hero.. If Hitler had a nuclear bomb England would have been destroyed.

If you are being attacked by someone trying to kill you, do you ponder the morality of your response or do you do what ir takes to survive?

I don't knoe what is being taught in high school and college today. I woder if people realize how our modern liberties were secured.

I had similar thoughts: "While y'all philosophize over the morality of the situation, the rest of us will be shooting back."

Some of us ponder the morality of the situation because some of us have a lot more options as to what "shooting back" looks like.

Do you shoot back with the gun?
Do you shoot back with the tank?
Do you shoot back with the mortar launcher?
Do you shoot back with the missile?
Do you shoot back with the bomber?
Do you shoot back with a nuke?
Do you shoot back with autonomous AI drone weapons?
Do you shoot back with...

Well, there are a lot of things to shoot back with, and SOMEONE has to ponder over what that is. And yes, when the war is over and nobody is trying to shoot you for now, you will need to sue for peace, and what you get as a response to that offer hinges entirely on how much you pondered the morality of your actions.

You can't unmake a weapon, and you can't un-nuke a city or country.

I understand. It's an unenviable position Joe Biden is in right now.

Will Putin continue indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities?
Can Ukrainian forces destroy the sources of the bombings?
Will Ukrainian forces enter Russian territory to do so?
How many trapped families will be killed between now and peace?

The majority of Ukrainians are still in Ukraine. If this is not stopped soonest, we will become desensitized and this will no longer be a headline.
I do not advocate the rattling of nuclear sabers. I stated in another post, I believe that that will be the epilogue of the story of humanity. I do advocate ratcheting up our conventional response and quickly, to the point of US forces destroying Russian forces within Ukraine. We've all read Putin's resume. We know what he will do. Are we simply going to continue to react to each and every atrocity after the fact?

All that gives me pause is the heaviness of economic sanctions levied upon Russia. I do not know, I do not think anyone knows how hard and fast this may crush Russia's economy, or not.

 

[Copernicus]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. Radioactivity is very very easy to detect, in even minuscule quantities. Being detectable is a total non-event. Being both detectable and traceable to a specific source is likewise a non-event; traceability is a particularly useful characteristic of radioactivity, which is widely exploited in medicine and engineering. It's got three eighths of fuck all to do with being hazardous, much less dangerous.

If we are going to characterise levels of radiation typical of cavendish bananas as "high levels of radioactivity", then we are abusing the phrase "high levels" beyond its breaking point.

High levels caused by roughly 400 above-ground bomb tests between 1945 and 1963, when Kennedy imposed a partial ban on above-ground testing. Before you go making claims of "no measurable harm", you should actually check to see if your statement has scientific backing. It is extremely difficult to prove that any particular case of cancer was caused by exposure to radiation, but we can look for statistical significance in populations:

CANCER RISK TO AMERICANS FROM ATOMIC TEST FALLOUT A CASE CONTROL STUDY OF STRONTIUM-90 IN BABY TEETH

1. The average Sr-90 level in teeth of persons who died of cancer was 122% greater – more than double – than in teeth of healthy controls, a significant difference
2. Average Sr-90 concentration in teeth of cancer survivors was not significantly elevated

And we aren't looking at anything like the levels of radiation that people would be exposed to from an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. This is just from a relatively small number nuclear tests conducted over a period of almost two decades.

I would strongly advise against taking the word of any website with a "DONATE" button prominently displayed.

That's even if you don't already know that radiation.org is an unashamed set of liars whose dedicated purpose is the ending of nuclear power generation.

Seriously, these cunts are beyond fucking awful. You would get more respect from me if you had linked to an argument by the Church of Scientology.

And the amount of Sr-90 in a typical person's teeth is utterly minuscule; 122% of fuck all is fuck all. They went p-hacking, and no surprise they found a 'significant' correlation between one of the radioisotopes they studied and cancer victims. They probably wouldn't admit that that's lying, but it's fucking lying.

View attachment 37824

Before you make counter claims that you believe have scientific backing, you should ensure that your sources aren't pseudoscientific charlatans with a massive bias who are systematically and deliberately lying to you (and anyone else they can hoodwink).

You claimed that there was no measurable harm caused by nuclear fallout, and I just cited one source against your unsupported claim. In response, your entire post was simply an attack on my source. That is logically invalid, since it is a classic genetic fallacy to attack a claim merely on the the basis of its origin. A donate button does not invalidate the study. Calling their method "p-hacking" and then posting a comic strip to mock it is perhaps the only way you can dismiss their claim, but a statistical argument is, in fact, the only way to address your claim that there was no measurable harm from fallout. In fact, there were detectable levels of sr-90 in the bones and teeth of children in my generation after those bomb tests, and there were deaths that correlated with elevated levels in teeth, your dismissal of the claim on grounds of the amount being "miniscule" notwithstanding. If you don't like that study, I suppose I can always fall back on good old Wikipedia:  Nuclear fallout.

 

[bilby]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. Radioactivity is very very easy to detect, in even minuscule quantities. Being detectable is a total non-event. Being both detectable and traceable to a specific source is likewise a non-event; traceability is a particularly useful characteristic of radioactivity, which is widely exploited in medicine and engineering. It's got three eighths of fuck all to do with being hazardous, much less dangerous.

If we are going to characterise levels of radiation typical of cavendish bananas as "high levels of radioactivity", then we are abusing the phrase "high levels" beyond its breaking point.

High levels caused by roughly 400 above-ground bomb tests between 1945 and 1963, when Kennedy imposed a partial ban on above-ground testing. Before you go making claims of "no measurable harm", you should actually check to see if your statement has scientific backing. It is extremely difficult to prove that any particular case of cancer was caused by exposure to radiation, but we can look for statistical significance in populations:

CANCER RISK TO AMERICANS FROM ATOMIC TEST FALLOUT A CASE CONTROL STUDY OF STRONTIUM-90 IN BABY TEETH

1. The average Sr-90 level in teeth of persons who died of cancer was 122% greater – more than double – than in teeth of healthy controls, a significant difference
2. Average Sr-90 concentration in teeth of cancer survivors was not significantly elevated

And we aren't looking at anything like the levels of radiation that people would be exposed to from an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. This is just from a relatively small number nuclear tests conducted over a period of almost two decades.

I would strongly advise against taking the word of any website with a "DONATE" button prominently displayed.

That's even if you don't already know that radiation.org is an unashamed set of liars whose dedicated purpose is the ending of nuclear power generation.

Seriously, these cunts are beyond fucking awful. You would get more respect from me if you had linked to an argument by the Church of Scientology.

And the amount of Sr-90 in a typical person's teeth is utterly minuscule; 122% of fuck all is fuck all. They went p-hacking, and no surprise they found a 'significant' correlation between one of the radioisotopes they studied and cancer victims. They probably wouldn't admit that that's lying, but it's fucking lying.

View attachment 37824

Before you make counter claims that you believe have scientific backing, you should ensure that your sources aren't pseudoscientific charlatans with a massive bias who are systematically and deliberately lying to you (and anyone else they can hoodwink).

You claimed that there was no measurable harm caused by nuclear fallout, and I just cited one source against your unsupported claim. In response, your entire post was simply an attack on my source. That is logically invalid, since it is a classic genetic fallacy to attack a claim merely on the the basis of its origin. A donate button does not invalidate the study. Calling their method "p-hacking" and then posting a comic strip to mock it is perhaps the only way you can dismiss their claim, but a statistical argument is, in fact, the only way to address your claim that there was no measurable harm from fallout. In fact, there were detectable levels of sr-90 in the bones and teeth of children in my generation after those bomb tests, and there were deaths that correlated with elevated levels in teeth, your dismissal of the claim on grounds of the amount being "miniscule" notwithstanding. If you don't like that study, I suppose I can always fall back on good old Wikipedia:  Nuclear fallout.

Correlation isn't causation. And even correlation hasn't actually been demonstrated, just hinted at so that people with an emotional revulsion for anything nuclear can rationalise their fear.

The arguments for harm to people from radioactive fallout of atmospheric bomb testing are exactly as sound, and mostly exactly the same, as the arguments for banning DHMO in food preparation.

 

[ZiprHead]

Has anyone thought about creating a bugout plan in case the shit really hits the fan? I considered going to my brother's place but he's too close to the military air base in Oscoda. My other brother might be a good candidate in Fife lake southeast of Traverse City. My brother-in-law lives southeast of Manistee so that would be the best of the choices.

 

[Bomb#20]

Hindenburg, an unrepentant Nazi, headed the Nazi atomic program.

Hindenburg was the President of Germany, Hitler's nominal boss, until he died in 1934. The head of the German atomic program was Heisenberg. Neither of them was a Nazi. Both of them tried to protect Jews from the Nazis; in Heisenberg's case, at risk of his life.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You have it backwards!

Sending the fallout higher is a good thing! It's not going to hurt anyone in the sky, the longer it takes before it comes down the less harm it causes. Furthermore, airbursts (of the proper height for the bomb in question) don't go sucking a bunch of material up and thus provide less material to fall back, thus delaying the fallout. Remember, there is an inverse relationship between radioactivity and half-life. The fiercely hot stuff doesn't last long. The stuff that falls back in an hour is roughly 100x as hot as the stuff that falls back in 2 days.

You don't think that the smoke rising from burning cities would carry radioactive debris into the atmosphere after the initial blast? The real short term danger would probably be the possibility of a global  Nuclear winter. And, as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs. That's why countries now conduct such tests underground. Also, you need to add into your calculations the number of nuclear warheads exploded around the globe. Cleaner bombs may actually produce a lot more radiation and damage to the environment when used in high quantity than a few dirty bombs.

With an airburst there isn't any appreciable radioactive debris on the target until the fallout comes down.

 

[Politesse]

Has anyone thought about creating a bugout plan in case the shit really hits the fan? I considered going to my brother's place but he's too close to the military air base in Oscoda. My other brother might be a good candidate in Fife lake southeast of Traverse City. My brother-in-law lives southeast of Manistee so that would be the best of the choices.

No hope. We're quite close to the city.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You claimed that there was no measurable harm caused by nuclear fallout, and I just cited one source against your unsupported claim. In response, your entire post was simply an attack on my source. That is logically invalid, since it is a classic genetic fallacy to attack a claim merely on the the basis of its origin. A donate button does not invalidate the study. Calling their method "p-hacking" and then posting a comic strip to mock it is perhaps the only way you can dismiss their claim, but a statistical argument is, in fact, the only way to address your claim that there was no measurable harm from fallout. In fact, there were detectable levels of sr-90 in the bones and teeth of children in my generation after those bomb tests, and there were deaths that correlated with elevated levels in teeth, your dismissal of the claim on grounds of the amount being "miniscule" notwithstanding. If you don't like that study, I suppose I can always fall back on good old Wikipedia:  Nuclear fallout.

While you call it a "comic" that's XKCD--he uses a comic format to explain a lot of scientific stuff. As for Wikipedia, look at what it says about your source:

as despite their papers being peer-reviewed, all independent attempts to corroborate their results return findings that are not in agreement with what the organization suggests.

We have only two data points showing harm from low level exposure:

1) The thyroid cancers after Chernobyl--but the expected deaths didn't show up. Something's strange there.

2) Radon exposure from uranium mining--but strangely the risk only applies to smokers.

 

[Bomb#20]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. ...

According to this statistical analysis, atmospheric nuclear tests in the 50s and 60s caused an estimated 11,000 extra leukemia and thyroid cancer deaths. That's a tiny fraction of total deaths from cancer, but the harm is measurable and statistically significant.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Has anyone thought about creating a bugout plan in case the shit really hits the fan? I considered going to my brother's place but he's too close to the military air base in Oscoda. My other brother might be a good candidate in Fife lake southeast of Traverse City. My brother-in-law lives southeast of Manistee so that would be the best of the choices.

No hope. We're quite close to the city.

The Russian missile might malfunction, so there is some hope. I wonder what percentage of them will hit the targets.

Side note: Nothing of military significance over here, of course, but Argentina's president had the great idea of telling Putin he wanted Argentina to be Russia's gateway into Latin America, only to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine a few days later. So, I guess in the event of a full-scale war, Putin might just lob one our way out of revenge (it would be pointless strategically and I reckon it's improbable, but we're talking about Putin here , so I can't be sure. Will he want to punish governments that turned on him? )

 

[Copernicus]

Correlation isn't causation. And even correlation hasn't actually been demonstrated, just hinted at so that people with an emotional revulsion for anything nuclear can rationalise their fear.

Yes, everyone knows that correlations don't prove causation, and there have been other studies to establish the correlation, whether you like my source or not. What everyone also knows is that correlations are the necessary step in establishing a case for causation. That is a matter for scientists to establish. Neither of us is in a position to argue the science on this one, and the fact is that the scientific consensus supports the belief that sr-90 from fallout did cause elevated rates of cancer in the path of that fallout during the period of above-ground testing. The consensus was one of the principal reasons that above-ground nuclear tests were banned internationally. You may choose to disagree with that consensus, but you haven't established a coherent basis for that. A genetic fallacy to discredit one online article is not sufficient for that. You still need to explain why above-ground testing was banned, but underground testing permitted, by the Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

The arguments for harm to people from radioactive fallout of atmospheric bomb testing are exactly as sound, and mostly exactly the same, as the arguments for banning DHMO in food preparation.

Facile analogies like this are invalid and do nothing to support your argument. Bear in mind that every fusion warhead deployed and ready for use uses fission as the primary trigger, so the dirtiness of even modern warheads could produce high levels of radioactive fallout in the upper atmosphere. I have put the relevant portions in the quotation below in boldface:

Source: Differences Between Hydrogen and Atomic Bombs

Hydrogen Bomb​

A hydrogen bomb or H-bomb is a type of nuclear weapon that explodes from the intense energy released by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen bombs may also be called thermonuclear weapons. The energy results from the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium. A hydrogen bomb relies on the energy released from a fission reaction to heat and compress the hydrogen to trigger fusion, which can also generate additional fission reactions. In a large thermonuclear device, about half of the yield of the device comes from fission of depleted uranium. The fusion reaction doesn't really contribute to fallout, but because the reaction is triggered by fission and causes further fission, H-bombs generate at least as much fallout as atomic bombs. Hydrogen bombs can have much higher yields than atomic bombs, equivalent to megatons of TNT. The Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was a hydrogen bomb with a 50 megaton yield.

One other point I'd like to make about this discussion is that the US has designed relatively small H-bombs to deliver in quantity for its contribution to a nuclear apocalypse. The Russians, always concerned about maintaining their self-image as beating the West, has produced much larger, more spectacular warheads in order to enhance its ability to use nuclear weapons to intimidate others. Some of these weapons have rather large ranges of destruction--dwarfing the size of many US states. It is hard to see how any nuclear exchange could possibly be seen as survivable by either side. That is why the title of the following article is a bit misleading. Russia's nuclear arsenal isn't really designed to be strategic. It is window dressing, since nobody sane really thinks that a nuclear war can be won. The bombs themselves are definitely not duds. Their use as a strategy to prevail in a nuclear war is what the dud is.

RUSSIA’S MASSIVELY POWERFUL NUKES ARE STRATEGIC DUDS​

 

[ZiprHead]

Has anyone thought about creating a bugout plan in case the shit really hits the fan? I considered going to my brother's place but he's too close to the military air base in Oscoda. My other brother might be a good candidate in Fife lake southeast of Traverse City. My brother-in-law lives southeast of Manistee so that would be the best of the choices.

No hope. We're quite close to the city.

The Russian missile might malfunction, so there is some hope. I wonder what percentage of them will hit the targets.

Side note: Nothing of military significance over here, of course, but Argentina's president had the great idea of telling Putin he wanted Argentina to be Russia's gateway into Latin America, only to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine a few days later. So, I guess in the event of a full-scale war, Putin might just lob one our way out of revenge (it would be pointless strategically and I reckon it's improbable, but we're talking about Putin here , so I can't be sure. Will he want to punish governments that turned on him? )

I think he would start with European NATO countries.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Has anyone thought about creating a bugout plan in case the shit really hits the fan? I considered going to my brother's place but he's too close to the military air base in Oscoda. My other brother might be a good candidate in Fife lake southeast of Traverse City. My brother-in-law lives southeast of Manistee so that would be the best of the choices.

No hope. We're quite close to the city.

The Russian missile might malfunction, so there is some hope. I wonder what percentage of them will hit the targets.

Side note: Nothing of military significance over here, of course, but Argentina's president had the great idea of telling Putin he wanted Argentina to be Russia's gateway into Latin America, only to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine a few days later. So, I guess in the event of a full-scale war, Putin might just lob one our way out of revenge (it would be pointless strategically and I reckon it's improbable, but we're talking about Putin here , so I can't be sure. Will he want to punish governments that turned on him? )

I think he would start with European NATO countries.

I think if he uses nuclear weapons, he will start with tactical nukes, and only in Europe. If so, I reckon there probably will not be a full-scale war. However, if there is a full-scale war, all NATO countries will be the targets of many missiles, and a good number of non-NATO countries too (surely Sweden, or Finland). Seriously, Argentina is very probably not on the target list. However, Putin is a mass murderer and strong on vengeance against the wrong targets. In a situation in which he'd have nothing else to lose, I'm not certain that he won't do it.