Is Nuclear Winter Exaggerated? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Kurzgesagt “After The Bombs”

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks so much for watching! If you want to hear more about nuclear war, please check out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYHReWmfgdKmotksi=y-TH6Yi54LuXwKvn

[@athalfridhu]

Sodoma & Gomorrah mitologic destruction story, seems kind of that. If humanity suvives global nuclear war: they will do it again... Knowledge destruction is by far the worst cosequence. Kind of Alexandria's library destroyed by Khalifa Omar... But if we manage to keep sacred books is enough...

[@itspeekaboo]

What historical data have you read regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki? some 50% of deaths occurred after the initial blast due to radiation and sickness of wounds

[@cheesesvideosstorage8070]

"I live in Texas, where there are three seasons: hot, wretched-hot, and February." I love that. XD

[@NguyenMinh792]

Same with Vietnam 🤣🤣

[@badeatervlogsandmemes2128]

The February one was so accurate for this year. Why did it fluctuate so much this February?

[@williamkane]

@@badeatervlogsandmemes2128 Global Warming maybe?

[@stefthorman8548]

@@williamkane maybe we need nuclear winter to counter global warming?

[@douglaswickstrom6736]

And I live in Minnesota, where we have Not Yet Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction. During Road Construction we grow a tremendous amount of food, much of which goes to energy production. There is a comfortable cushion.

[@brainblessed5814]

The joke about nuclear fusion and peak oil being equally 20 away was delicious! You got my like.

[@jeffjag2691]

Climate change killing us all has been 10yrs out since the 60s. It’s almost like they have only one or two ideas.

[@cortster12]

I'm glad you're showing your skepticism here. I see a lot of talk about people wanting to give up if a nuclear war happens, or even thinking all of humanity will die so they may as well off themselves if nukes fly. When in reality you absolutely have a chance to survive. Nuclear war is horrifying. It would be the worst single tragedy in human history. That doesn't mean exaggerating it and dooming about it is healthy though. A LOT will die, but not ALL or likely even close to all.

[@spvillano]

Not a great chance of survival here, both due to age and medical condition and well, I essentially live on ground zero with governmental communication nodes and military supply depots ringing the area. More representative population areas, absolutely a good chance to survive - miserably for up to a decade, then basically back to normal environment and rebuilding. And for those wanting to say fallout, blather, blather, treaties limit the number of deployed devices to around what was already detonated in the atmosphere when I was a child. I'm obviously still here. Maybe not altogether all there, but still here. ;) Most devices would be air bursts, to ensure destruction of sizable targets, maximum fallout from thermonuclear devices is maybe a half ton at most, most being fairly short lived isotopes. The biggest population bottleneck events would be a loss of food distribution hubs and a handspan of years of no to poor crop growth, primary cause of death would end up being loss of medicines and starvation.

[@brianfox771]

@@spvillano Yeah, I agree a lot with your assessment. Most of the bombs would be air-burst nearly eliminating fallout, and drastically reducing the amount of ash and smoke in the upper atmosphere. I think, based on the evidence and speculation from it, that the worst case scenario is something akin to the Mt. Tambora eruption in 1815 with the year or two with no summer. And last time I checked it did not lead to famines world wide or collapse of civilization. I'm on the same page a you, though. The biggest cause of famines and bottleneck events will be the supply chain and industrial capacity disruption and destruction. If I recall correctly, 1% of the total energy output worldwide is spent on the Haber process, converting nitrogen into ammonia to make fertilizer. Without fertilizer and pesticide production, fuel for farm equipment and transportation, and a lack of infrastructure to transport it globally, you're going to have some serious famines. That said, I think a 50% reduction in available calories for most in the US wouldn't be a famine but a good start in becoming healthier, given the obesity epidemic rates here. 😂

[@coltafanan]

Well the problem is this only takes into account nuclear war. Imagine the conventional wars this may be spawn and also even if you survive, you’re basically living hell so much of a quality of life

[@jarrodbright5231]

So as someone with an environmental chemistry background, I can tell you for certain that nuclear winter will not last for long even if it were to happen. In fact, increased global warming would be more likely. The biggest argument aginst nuclear winter is that environmental scientists have looked at options to put heat reflective particles into the atmosphere to reverse global warming. Even the most optimistic model for particles suggested so far has them lasting in the atmosphere for 3 years. If we can't get it to happen intentionally I dont' think it's going to happen unintentionally. The Kurzgesagt video falls apart at 3:20 (in this video). There is no weather in the upper atmosphere but there is still gravity. Large particles like soot will not stay up there indefinitely as ui have indicated at 06:40 - in fact they won't stay there beyond a few weeks. It won't stay there for a decade or so as indicated in the Kurzgesagt video Now, here's the bad news for Nuclear WInter. The carbon that separates from the soot and does stay up there will react with highly energized oxygen particles to form CO2. As we all know that heats up the planet by trapping heat in rather than cooling the planet. The fact it is reducing the amount of ozone in our atmosphere is a bigger problem but that's a completely different issue and not increased UV radiation is not causing "winter" conditions. To make it worse, with a reduction in plant life you'd have a massive increase of atmospheric CO2 and remove most of your CO2 sink, which means... the exact opposite of nuclear winter. Bottom line, you can't use carbon (the main component of soot and smoke) to cool down the atmosphere. It either drops back down or it reacts and does the opposite. This is why scientists looking at using atmospheric interference to reverse climate change are looking at using Sulfur based compounds. These would be the theoretical cause of nuclear winter and these are too heavy to stick around in the atmosphere for long enough. Soot is much heavier than SO2. Now if there is enough SO2 and other sulfates from sulfur containing substances in cities being burnt to create a nuclear winter, then that's all over in 3 years in a worst case scenario. But what you need to worry about is sulfur and sulfates in particular, not soot.

[@hypramgeth7449]

Methane is also a greenhouse gas and to avoid grim details I'll just say there could be a lot more of it. I like your thinking but wouldn't convection carry sooty air upwards? Brownian motion lifts smaller particles and larger particles absorb more heat and rise up with convection. Also if the sea cools it absorbs more CO2

[@jarrodbright5231]

​@@hypramgeth7449 Sooty air will indeed be lifed upwards by convection particularly since the places it will be created will be super-headed by the heat from a nuclear warhead, but it's not going to stay there. Gravity still exists in the upper atmosphere and soot is really heavy.

[@cl4rkkent381]

You need to worry about infrastructure blown up, society breakdown, and supply chain disruption. No electricity, no gas, no money, and scarcity of food.

[@Merennulli]

Kurzgesagt tends to make a lot of cultural references and I suspect the "like a demon" part was a reference to Adventure Time. It's a cartoon with very kid-like themes (Candy Kingdom, unicorns, etc.) but it's a post apocalypse world after the "Great Mushroom War" where a demon-like Litch from space was behind a nuclear/magic war. It's one of those series with a hilarious mix of surface level cute storytelling and horrifying implications. One of the iconic scenes from the show literally was what they described figuratively. I appreciate that Kurzgesagt lowered their number to actually usable nuclear weapons (4400 rather than the 13k+ frequently cited). The difference is not including tactical, which aren't first or second-strike capable in a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. Tactical nuclear weapons are basically meant to give the option of NOT immediately going to full nuclear war if someone else uses nukes in a limited fashion and there are a lot of them because they have to be positioned locally. 4400 is still a high estimate, given that most probably wouldn't launch in time to avoid a first strike and a significant percentage are undergoing maintenance at any given time, but it is meant to be a worst case scenario.

[@Hamstray]

The estimates for the Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 are about 33 gigatons, and cooling of up to about 1.7 degrees centigrade.

[@hata6290]

significantly different from nukes however

[@jarrodbright5231]

Soot from volcanoes is very different to soot from burning cities. Sulfur is what causes cooling, not Carbon, and volcanic eruptions are full of that stuff.

[@piotrgruchalski5814]

Worst case scenario in this video about the largest war says 4400 nuclear bombs. Today there are around 12000 nuclear bombs in existence, so even the worst case scenario considered only 1/3 of those being launched, but also consider the fact that old predictions were most likely based on even more nuclear weapons being deployed. Around 1985, there were 60000 nuclear bombs in existence worldwide, so a prediction from those times could be considering over 10x more bombs dropped than Kurzgesagt today.

[@danonstephen847]

Practically speaking you can't have every nuke in the world detonated as a large chunk are retired or inactive/reserve. the USA for example has "1,770 warheads are deployed, while approximately 1,938 are held in reserve. Additionally, approximately 1,536 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5,244 nuclear warheads. Of the approximately 1,770 warheads that are deployed, 400 are on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, roughly 970 are on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 are at bomber bases in the United States, and 100 tactical bombs are at European bases." given the reserve and retired can't really be used that alone the USA only has 1,770, & given over half of those are on submarines that wouldn't be able to launch till they surface, which is when they find out nuclear war has happen as sub don't maintain contact when under water. Also how many nukes would fail to launch or not explode. So 4400 is likely the most nukes that could explode in a single day currently.

[@joshuagleeson4776]

Not every warhead is on an ICBM. The figures in the video are correct.

[@ImperialGeneral]

As far as the India/Pakistan conflict, the reason it is considered the most likely nuclear war scenario is because tensions between both countries are roughly equivalent to Cold War tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with both sides even exchanging the occasional bit of gunfire between soldiers operating in the disputed Kashmir region. Both sides weapons lean toward tactical nuclear weapons and Pakistan is heavily incentivized to use them in case of war as they are greatly outnumbered in terms of number of tank formations and there are few, relatively compact passageways between the two countries India could send those formations through. However, it's still pretty unlikely as while both countries had three wars before either developed nuclear weapons but only one since and even really dangerous scenarios like India recently accidentally launching a nuclear capable cruise missile into Pakistan didn't result in anything.

[@rogeriopenna9014]

I positioned that "move here map" over a map of South AMerica. The very center of the target is over southwestern Paraguay, close to the border with Argentina. If you consider the white circle, it reaches northern Uruguay, the northwestern part of Rio Grande do Sul state in Brazil (including towns like São Borja, Santa Rosa, Três Passos, Uruguaiana, and Horizontina (birth town of super model Gisele Bündchen). it also includes the town of Cândido Godói, the famous german settled city in Brazil that had such high rate of twins that when nazi Joseph Mengele escaped to South America, he went there to study the twin rate.

[@petersmythe6462]

One thing I will say here, the food reserves described doesn't typically include crops already in the ground or cattle and poultry already alive. Crops and cattle do not operate on a cycle of a few weeks as they describe but one of years. In the US and Russia, there would also be a pretty severe population drop from the war which reduces the demand for food. The food producing areas could likely run on their reserves far longer than this simplified calorie production and stored stocks model projects. What they have done is essentially argued that if you have a field of potatoes or a herd of cows, that not only will the potatoes and cows be killed by bombs remote from the area, but they will become inedible even in desperation. It's also worth mentioning that much of the Northern temperate band produces large amounts of feed and fuel crops. In fact, it's probably the majority of the crops growing there. Many of these are edible. Even if they cannot continue to produce during the next winter, they could switch to feeding these existing crops to their population instead of using them for fuel or to feed livestock, which is more energy efficient. People are also likely to resort to eating anything edible before starving. Pets, zoo animals, wild animals, fish, plants, tubers, fungi, the millions of dead human bodies from the initial blast, maybe even people who are unlikely to survive, etc. This is a huge additional reserve of calories that should extend the time before hard famine significantly. I'm short, I don't think growing seasons ending for a few weeks is going to cause an immediate famine. If that were the case, we'd have famines routinely during normal, non-nuclear winters. Nor would a famine be thinning the herd down to production levels in a matter of weeks simply because that's the amount of time people take to starve.

[@DudeAnon-u3s]

In fact, nuclear war is not the end of everything; it is merely the beginning of the war. You can expect conventional forces to keep fighing, even for years, after the initial strike as government tend to be reasonable on this issue. Most ICBM will find their target in missile silos, strategic command centre, large industrial assets and residential zone are some of the least priorities. I think that it is absolutely fine to have a opinion against a nuclear war, but that dosen't mean you could like twist reality whatever you like, to your preferences.

[@discontinued12934]

Exactly, Germany was basically bombed to smithereen at the end of world war 2 yet they kept on fighting. Just because large portions of the population are dead and a lot of cities destroyed doesn't mean the fighting stops.

[@t.b.cont.]

The bad news is we won’t be able to grow as much food. The good news is we’ll have a whole lot less people to feed

[@lolicantthinkofabettername3437]

6:00 Not that you are wrong, but in the video they where talking about the sut cloud that froms because of the fires, not the mushroom itself. At least I think that is what they meant in the video.

[@ericgoldman7533]

Countering that the bomb yields would be too low to send enough particulate into the stratosphere is invalid, because Kurzgesagt clearly states it's the fires _after_ the explosions that will create the updrafts, not the nuclear explosions themselves. There are of course still plenty of other variables to consider, including what and how much flammable material there even is in the cities.

[@simkoning4648]

The mushroom cloud isn't what they said would reach the stratosphere, it would be soot via pyroconvection and self-lofting. With sufficiently dense smoke clouds, sunlight heats the black carbon and lofts the cloud like a hot air balloon. This can happen even without a firestorm and has been measured following massive forest fires. In other words, we have actual empirical evidence of these effects thanks to unprecedented forest fires in Canada and Australia. In case you're wondering why those don't produce a "winter", it's because forest fires produce far less black carbon smoke than what a city fire would produce. Even so, those clouds damaged the ozone layer and caused a small amount of cooling. I also see people in the comments bring up the Gulf fires; later research shows the smoke produced by those fires were not dense enough to be lifted by sunlight. A burning city would produce far more sooty smoke in a much smaller area. This is ultimately a climatological subject. I recommend reading the most recent papers on both large forest fires and NW simulated with modem climate models, the same employed for climate change research.

[@madmax2069]

4:08 Seeing the world map like that and Australia sitting there out of the way reminds me of an old movie called on the beach (1959), and there the 2000 version.

[@ThorirPP]

Honestly, I don't get what you mean by "recently" with the whole demon thing. I feel like Kurzgesagt has always been very colourful with its language and metaphors, it is nothing new. Sometimes it is in a silly way, sometimes it is more dramatic one. They aren't literally talking about why mushroom clouds move up lol. It is just a thing they do sometimes when they want to set the mood, like with the background music, the sense of horror that is nuclear war. It is not strictly scientific, but it is nothing new for them either, they have always been very much telling a story with their videos

[@manawa3832]

the 80s the world had 86,000 nukes, big ones, and everyone was itching to use every single one. not only that but massive chemical weapon stockpiles. today no such threat exists anymore.

[@AtomicDream]

Hey Tyler, if I can call you that. I remember being here back in 2022 and only had a few hundred scribers. Great job very eloquent content. Soon enough on Ko-Fi you’ll have another SVP. Keep up the great work!

[@ForksandFreaks]

7:47 And this year we barely have even had a February season, at least where I am. We had two days at the coldest be 34°F, but it’s been on average 74°F at the lowest.

[@alexc4159]

The fallout is at safe levels at 2 weeks to a month and it's only really gonna be a hazard within the local radius of the blast plus some change depending on the wind and typography of the land. As for nuclear winter Krakatoa was over 200 megaton launching 20 million tonnes of sulphur in to the atmosphere this effected the climate potentially causing a famin in iceland but the overal effect was a few years. Nuclear winter has some basis but it being an extinction level event is highly exaggerated. Between 61-62 the US and soviet union detonated 360 megatons worth of atmospheric detonations with the largest single detonation being a wopping 50 megatons with the tsar bomb. This did not cause a nuclear winter and the weapons dwarfed anything we used today which average a yeild of 1000kt. That being said most of the population would die off from the power grid being annihilated, whats left of emergency services, hospitals, law enforcment and fire fighters would collaps under the pressure, the logistics of the nation will completely collaps causing wide spread famin yet alone global trade which would go. Most populations in the 3rd world which are heavily dependent on foreign aid would also mostly die off. Old diseases would make a come back wiping out populations globally. Basically forgetting about fictions of radiation killing everyone and nuclear winter wiping out all life you are still dealing with total civilisational collaps, billions of people dying off and a long dark age for the survivors. I doubt moving to an already dirt poor country like Argentina would save you. I wouldn't want to be the one gringo in south America when the local war lord comes knocking.

[@InforSpirit]

I have pondered what is society's information Collapse-score in these days. What is level of information average person can hold and use, because calamity will handle everyone semi-randomly. Antikytheran mechanism is creat example of domain experience dissappearing for centuries before something similar was build again.

[@markustherogue2413]

0:41 hey tyler, wouldnt all those bombs need to go off at like the exact same microsecond to ensure the first one that goes off doesnt destroy the rest? how would you even go about coordinating something like that?

[@EdwinCombs]

What would happen to the nuclear reactors in the country if a nuclear exchange happened? If, the exchange was large enough and the government basically was not going to be very functional or extremely limited. what can be expected from a nuclear reactor? Would it melt down and spew radioactive clouds that basically poison hundreds miles around them for thousands of years?

[@skwervin1]

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and stuff like this was commonly talked about and having the thought of nuclear war over our heads for so many years. The book/film When the Wind Blows would scare the shit out of you!

[@bami2]

The Day After also works and Threads for a bit more of the euro experience as well. The mantra of that last movie might as well been "and then it got worse".

[@petersmythe6462]

Not only is it a secondary effect, but the "nuclear Autumn" scenario is also precisely dependent on how food gets distributed, since it's not likely it's actually hard capping the population to the amount of food available.

in the 1980es the number of active warheads was a lot higher, and some of the assumption were oerly negative.

[@Joe-Dead]

it's not just the smoke, it's the vaporized particulates, much like a volcanic eruption. the major difference being the type of particulates, how far they get boosted into the upper atmosphere, and their overall reflectivity. THEN you throw in the particulates and gasses generated by civilization or at least it's creations burning...these are actually LESS of an issue as they aren't boosted into the stratosphere so will fall out relatively quickly. volcanic winters ARE literal things that happen, that's where the nuclear winter possibility comes from, the jetting of particulates into the upper atmosphere where it can take years or longer to filter out.

[@Joe-Dead]

@erwinrommel2498 i said NOT JUST THE SMOKE...which means ALSO GASSES. ffs. secondly the gas emissions don't last nearly as long as the particulates. the initial rapid cooling would be gasses, the continued cooling would be particulates circulating in the upper atmosphere.

[@Joe-Dead]

@erwinrommel2498 except they aren't comparable at all. nor is it a matter of 'being defensive' you were wrong, you assumed something i never said, that's a strawman kid. don't do that. a forest or bush fire doesn't push nowhere NEAR as many particulates into the upper atmosphere NOR does it produce the equivalent gas emissions and particulate emissions of a volcano. this isn't guess work kiddo, humans know what volcanos output, we know what fires output, we know what nuclear weapons can output. there's no guess work or 'just my opinion' kid. it's the reality of studying ALL those things in DETAIL. and rommel was as bad as any other nasi. right there with his leader until the war started going BADLY. then he decided to try for a plan B.

[@Joe-Dead]

@erwinrommel2498 your first post was telling me i was wrong when you LITERALLY had no idea. secondly kiddo,, i never did ALL CAPS, all caps is the entire post in caps...that's why it's called all caps. i use caps for EMPHASIS. lastly, and get this through your head, smoke has NOTHING to do with a nuclear winter. it is SHORT TERM, a nuclear winter is LONG TERM. if you used ANY effing logic from the real world, counted up the number and severity of wildfires across the globe and IF your GUESS was true then the earth would be going through a winter NOW. it obviously is not. the parallels between volcanos and nuclear bombs is the fact they push particulates and everything else they generate into the upper atmosphere where it lingers. not just smoke rising from something like a fire. that rarely if ever reaches those heights no matter how big it is because it's quite simply too spread out so there is no localized jet (volcano) or extreme hot spot exceeding the temp of the sun, a nuke. both have the explosive force because again, it's not some leisurely stroll into the upper atmosphere it's a forceful injection. fires don't inject, they burn over a wide area and the smoke gets dissipated by wind across all atmospheric bands. it can cause local or regional issues and massive ones can even briefly cause cooling...BRIEFLY. but not by the same mechanic that sparks a volcanic or nuclear winter. and since this has turned into a effing essay already, last point. there won't be just one nuke per city, their will be multiple per location, each one generating more debris for the next to pump into the upper atmosphere, that's where the concept of nuclear winter comes from, the repeated strikes on areas already hit because hey, the military likes to make damn sure. each one of those is generating a blast pushing vaporized material up up and away...are you finally starting to see how it does not relate to a forest or bush fire at all? the smoke from fires generated by nuclear blast will cause cooling and if that's all they did, set fires, nuclear winter wouldn't be a thing. might last a year or two until it all filters back out. it's what's kicked high up that takes SO much longer and the more there is the longer it takes and the earth stays cold, stays reflective. that's why really big volcanic eruptions can have cooling periods extending years while fires can barely last one if they have a noticeable effect (beyond regional) at all.

[@Joe-Dead]

@erwinrommel2498 there's nothing to refute CHILD. you get labeled how you act kid. a petulant child caught being wrong with too much ego to just accept it. there is NOTHING TO REFUTE because EVERYTHING i've stated is from the research done on nuclear winter, i told you this wasn't an OPINION child. to refute it you would have to write a paper dismissing all the evidence with FACTS, not your uneducated OPINION.

[@Joe-Dead]

@erwinrommel2498 more words you don't know the actual meaning of. why don't you toodle off kid and find someone more at your level...like preschool? they know as little as you do so ya'll should get along great. though, you're lazier since you could have found out everything i know on your own...and ya didn't. instead your feels, guesses, and limited knowledge hand in hand with your ego led you to just dig yourself in deeper. pretty childish.

[@monicafamalett855]

As someone who read "Alas, Babylon" in grade school, I was AMAZED that I lived long enough to get through college. Anything that happens after that, is gravy. And yes, I'm still more skeered of a nuke than of atmospheric warming. I kind of got burned out of "scared" during the Reagan administration.

[@ActrosTech]

6:16 - There was been an attempt to make two of them from what Ive remember(?), but scientists (alongside downgrading the actual working prototype from 100 to 57 Mt) simply made just one, leaving unused casings for the second one colored and painted as Earth globes for a decoration outside the nuclear facility or something of that stuff. I am honestly glad USSR scientists had more brains than any politicians to this very day, because they knew the consequences of these devices and never wished them to be a real thing.

[@jirikivaari]

Nice video. Like you said, there's so much uncertainty of what would be happen, the error of margin is just huuge. Btw, isn't this kinda argument for small modular reactors, wind turbines, solar etc. which are spread out but are likely to provide a lot of power in case of major disruption (doesn't have to be something as crazy as this). David Denkenberger's book "Feeding Everyone No Matter What" is an interesting book about how to provide food in major global crisis, which could be something else too. It talks about innovative ways to provide food supply from bacteria, algae, mushrooms etc for most people.

[@kahleeb624]

I get nuclear winter isn't as bad as it's known in cultural terms. But still find it interesting that a nuclear physicist doesn't know that something as fine and small as ash can EASILY hang in the air for years in end. Yes they might be heavier than air, but so is water yet clouds hang above as if they aren't heavier... because they aren't and have broken down smaller and smaller until the combination of heat and temp changes, WIND and so on would easily keep the ash and soot in the air for years.

[@airatshakirov]

So we need nuclear powered greenhouses instead just sunlight powered fields for that type of scenarios.

[@HT-io1eg]

The Game Theory people have run these numbers over and over. Yes, lots of variables. But with supercomputers you can run a billion simulations, number/size of devices. Time of year. Target distribution. Then edge case manipulations of assumptions as to drop in sunlight, temperatures, logistics. Take a couple of thousand variables, multiply them out, a few billion simulation results. It’s all just numbers and these people know what a 2.4% drop in sunlight (or any number between 2 & 50 or whatever) means for temperature, for rainfall, for crops, blights, diseases. Not sure why they bother anymore, the initial research was for wargaming, could a weapon exchange work in any shape or form - Rand Corporation stuff - it became clear very quickly that unimaginable deaths was the general outcome so they just went with MAD, as running any more numbers was futile

[@dominikwendel3560]

Question: Is it true though that the soot stays much longer in the stratosphere? I have the feeling that the air is much thinner the higher the cloud rises and therefore especially heavier particles and major smoke molecules fall out much faster than expected by a lot of researchers (They often compare it to storms on Mars without an atmosphere, but the difference is that on Mars the clouds are not formed by fires but perpetual storms).

[@isakrynell8771]

A full scale nuclear war would be the worst thing to hit the northern hemisphere since the bubonic plague but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

[@hypramgeth7449]

I think 'Threads' is still the most accurate science fictional film, it does a pessimistic prediction of nuclear winter and ultra violet spring a bit like movies usually assume electro magnetic pulses will break all technology. Threads was intended to warn but it didn't make anything up, even the creepy 'protect and survive' broadcast which people assume was for scary atmosphere was really authentic.

[@emptyforrest]

nuclear winter from nuclear war have been long been greatly exaggerated, also nuclear winter have nothing to do with radiation. it would only affect the local climate for a short term. for a firestorm to cause the effect that are constantly described its needs perfect conditions. not even massive forest fires have nowhere near the effects that could cause nuclear winter. the only things that can cause that level atmosphere particulate is large asteroid impacts and massive volcano eruptions.

[@dufo4766]

Excellent, excellent commentary, thanks a lot of posting!

[@limabravo6065]

A Full scale exchange goes off in stages 1. High altitude bursts just above the atmosphere to cripple the communications and electrical sytems. Dozens of high yield weapons like the starfish prime test 2. Strategic targets like all places military or military affiliated like weapons manufacturers and the massive icbm missile fields, any place associated with nuclear power or weapons from refineries to power plants 3. Command control and economy ie Washington dc, known bunkers and economic centers like NYC 4. Population centers aka cities, to max out the body count and make any potential rebuilding as difficult as possible And every single targeted area would be hit with dozens of warheads all of which are of the thermonuclear variable yield variety but would be in the hundreds of kilotons each (no reason to pull punches if this is where we are going)

[@soylentgreenb]

Radiation doesn’t scale. For small bombs the prompt radiation is by far the worst; single digit kilotonnes. But for larger devices the shockwave keeps scaling up while the prompt gammas have a halving thickness of 170 meters of air plus obey the inverse square law. Some gammas are caused by the interaction with air up to a few km from ground zero by fast neutrons. These gammas originate farther from the detonation; but once they exist the halving thickness is about he same as any other gammas.

[@jwnomad]

Lack of food and shelter is one thing, but life without the internet will be unbearable.

[@fabriziobiancucci7702]

Even if human civilization would collapse (worst-case scenario), humanity probably will take just a few centuries to return to our current level, maybe even just few decades. We are creating much more ways to preserve knowledge than our ancestors, which could easily be used by the survivors. Just think of the books; even if a small percentage of them will resist, there will still be millions of books tht explains engineering, biology, physics and a lot of other stuff. Not to mention that almost all the people, at least in the northern emisphere, knows how to read and write and can pass such knowledge to future generations. It's very likely that humanity will recover very fast once the nuclear winter will end, and maybe it could even be a good thing for our civilization (not people), because since we have already used the majority of coal, oil and natural gas in the planet and what is remaining would be located only in a few regions of the world, the new nations would probably focus on other ways to produce energy, and this combined with the nuclear winter would contribute to lower the climate change if not stop it completely. It's even very likely that also on a cultural interaction there would an improvement, because every catastrophic event in history was followed by the birth of new organization to prevent such things to repeat (like ONU after WW2), so it would be benefical even for world peace. Of course it would still be a terrible scenario since the number of death, but it's very likely that humanity would actually improve after such an event.

[@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA]

We still likely would be hundreds of years behind. Look at what happens now when we talk about loss of institutional knowledge example nasa wants to build new falcon engines some of the best engines in the world, but they havent been made in almost 80yrs and the people that know it are dead. Despite having all the technical manuals schematics blueprints etc the minor changes tweaks, adjustments etc that was done by the origional builders to get the best bang for the buck is all gone that insitutional knowledge lost. The same would happen on a greater scale in a nuclear war

[@fabriziobiancucci7702]

@@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA Well... no. The majority of the project that permit our current lifestyle are actually easy to comprehend, and if you have a blueprint, even fragmented, you basically have no effort to build them. Of course some of the most technological things that we have, like computers, space rockets, internet and so on, will take more time to be rediscovered (even if it will be less than what we took to invent them), but we could easily return on a level comparable to the mid-20th century in a matter of few decades (if we will have enough resources)

[@player1_fanatic]

I knew this one was coming since it was released yesterday!

[@patrickdegenaar9495]

Sum total of nuclear warheads: ~5-10GT. Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 = 0.2GT and led to a worldwide temperature change of dTpeak =-1C for 5 years. So it would d not be unreasonable to assume an average change of dT = -5C to -20C depending on feedback that would need to be modelled in much more detail. But as per krakatoa, it would only be at its worst for a few years, or even less, if the majority of soot doesn't get to the stratosphere.

[@ketelin4285]

Standard wh is half MT so about 2 GT of deliverable stuff . If you want to calibrate things with Krakatoa please notice that you only factor the initial explosion not the rest of the energy eliberated afterwards . The dino asteroid is a single event that had 72 terratones and didn't managed to wipe out life on earth although it certainly made a difference .

[@Romuls753]

Kurz is also fundamentally wrong about smoke and ash being trapped above the stratosphere because "there's no weather to remove the particles". The ash and soot is heavier than air so it will eventually fall out of the layers above the stratosphere, and it wouldn't be trapped because "there's no weather to remove it", the jet stream is the first weather phenomenon that comes to mind that would help with the particles falling out of the air. Soot and ash aren't as heavy as Cesium, Uranium, Plutonium, etc, but they aren't weightless

[@Romuls753]

I can't believe I paused to comment this right before he mentioned it, lol. Mediocre minds work along similar lines to great minds it seems

[@gonnaenodaethat6198]

i think barometric presure would play a big roll in keeping shmedium sized soot in the atmosphere longer then their density would segest due to upward drafts of cool air

[@elchippe]

The problem is that in a nuclear war one of the main targets are industrial facilities and fuel storage facilities, that sooth will stay much longer in the atmosphere and reduce sun light.

[@bobbyschannel349]

I don't know, ann Jacobson came out with a book and she said that the model is even worse than they thought. She said that they've done new computer models on nuclear winter as of recently, she said that it can last up to 8 to 10 years..

[@spvillano]

The models from the pre-Gulf War I era weren't exaggerated, they were just strewn with assumptions and errors. The smoke from the oil fires was modeled and some rather dire predictions were initially made, to entirely not come to pass, prompting a reexamination of the models. Suffice it to say, the new models are much, much more accurate.

[@spvillano]

Well, some could get radioactive, that'd require contact with well, the core of the weapon. Nuclear winter was disproved by improved models back in the '90's. That all said, still not an optimal course forward...

[@unclemikedoyle]

Long-term, secondary, and synergiztic effects of nuclear war are well beyond my domain of expertise. I'm just a Forensic Science practicioner (thank you, GI Bill!) with a limited amount of military training in CBRN defense, plus basic special weapons handling, so I'll defer to your expertise. Having said that, though... I've read critiques of the original Nuclear Winter paper that hinted that Turco, et al. were using (although they didn't quite come out and accuse them of deliberately having used) contradictory assumptions within the same scenario - for example, assuming all weapons would be fuzed airburst to maximize the firestorms for one component, while simultaneously (?!?) assuming that all weapons would be fuzed surface burst in order to maximize the amount of debris thrown into the air - thus exaggerating the environmental impacts to magnify the effect for their target audience. Similarly, in part based upon your commentary, I respectfully submit that Kurzgesagt may have gone for dramatic exaggeration for the sake of entertainment. Doom porn sells, no argument. But we need accurate information before we can even hope to make rational decisions. My great fear about the "TTAPS Report" (and, to a lesser extent, entertainment such as we have here) was expressed in the critique that held that, by exaggerating the magnitude of the hazard, the authors have set up a situation where, when the faulty assumptions are rebutted if not outright debunked, the average citizen is left with a vague impression that the use of nuclear weapons is somewhat LESS hazardous than previously thought. And never mind that "Getting into a Nuclear War" is still Number 1 on the global list of Real Bad Ideas... I fear that, whatever their good intentions, they may have, perversely, made the use of nuclear weapons at least slightly MORE likely in a crisis, precisely because of that vague impression. Does anyone trust the average politician to see beyond that vague impression of "less hazardous" in this so-called modern age? I sure don't...

[@SBVCP]

The winter part shouldn't be *THAT* bad, there are plenty of food reserves in the world afaik to last the few years that said winter would last for. Though Im not sure what would happen with local fuauna and flora, let alone fields .. though I guess worse case scenario we COULD burn coal and gas and anything to fuel massive greenhouses. It would be expensive but I dont think we would starve? As for southamerica, and particularly argentina, my country, the risk is of that of a far more traditional war PRECISELY because it would be *out of reach*.... it would be an asset, a quite literaly granary for the highest bidder but given the need, the chances of invasion would be high I guess

[@neondaybreak]

It's a worrying subject, especially today. The thing about it is, while humanity would survive it, is it actually worth surviving? I mean every scenario would set us back anywhere from decades to hundreds of years, waste enormous resources and it's not even certain that we will reach the same level we have now, let alone something beyond that. If we really throw the prospects of our species away that easily, we should just simply die out imo. Make room for something else to try and build something better, if there are still enough resources left.

[@squidwardfromua]

And if we are ready to get extіnct in the case of nuсlear winter, why not to get extіnct without it? Welcome to VHEMT, fella.

[@neondaybreak]

@@squidwardfromua because we still have the chance to live up to hour potential, although the chance is slim, judging by who we elect to be the leaders of nations and the general narrow mindedness of the majority of people.

[@leesatterthwaite4719]

Serious question. Would a bomb in a sandy desert be worse, in so much as sand been kicked up into the atmosphere.

[@Trazynn]

Covid provided that our supply chains are quite fragile. So if there's any overestimation in atmospheric dimming happening, it's largely compensating for how much our supply chains would be disrupted by less of it.

[@meglukes]

With urbanization being the way it is, after a nuclear exchange of this magnitude you’re going to have fewer mouths to feed, especially in the areas that need to import all their food (not a lot of farming in Manhattan), so include that in the calculation.

[@moozoowizard]

Kurzgesagt is based on "Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection" that appeared in nature food journal.

[@cefcephatus]

Wait, Texas has the same seasons as Thailand?

[@ronmaximilian6953]

The teams are bigger and a lot more complicated. Russia, China, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are allied or closely working together. Then we have the US and the rest of NATO, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam (ironies abound), the Philippines, and New Zealand. Suddenly, the southern hemisphere doesn't look so good. And then we get some wild cards of Israel and India, both of which are nuclear powers. Speaking of which, you get more or fewer miles to the gallon with radioactive gasoline?

[@rhodiirodiles2520]

The one thing left out was, even if you could've moved down south, wouldn't all of the oceans be uninhabitable? And even dangerous to be next to?? Im no nuclear expert but i don't think water can ever purify radiation no mattter how long its been in there for..

[@squidwardfromua]

There's just too much water in the world for even thousands of nukes to pollute for any dangerous level imo. But I'm not a nuclear expert either

[@petersmythe6462]

It seems decidedly unlikely that "human civilization would collapse." The southern hemisphere countries literally have no reason to collapse in this scenario and there's way too much knowledge to actually lose "thousands" of years of tech and development. For the southern hemisphere nations I think the likely outcome would be more like the collapse of the Soviet Union or at most the Arduous March famine in North Korea than truly collapsing to the iron age.

[@cl4rkkent381]

Why would one think nuclear war is the end of war? They will deploy troops after dropping nukes.

[@alanritchie8890]

Interesting. I did a quick maths calculation. The additional, energy trapped by CO2 concentrations going from 300 ppm at the turn of last century to the present concentration of 420 ppm has been compared to the energy input of 4 Hiroshima size nuclear bombs exploding every second, continuously. That amounts to over 8 trillion tons of yield every day. That is just the additional yield calculated from industrial society. The total yield of all known nuclear ordinance is almost 2 trillion tons less than that. So in one day the Earth can absorb more climate changing energy than would be released by all out nuclear war. Also note that Russia spends a sizable part of GDP on building well stocked bunker protection for all its population. The West spends almost nothing, apart from protecting the 'leadership'. See any motive here, for promoting the nihilistic nuclear winter scenario, with its 'Your all going to die message'?

[@bencruz563]

I don't know if there is any aspect of nukes not exaggerated. Not that nuke bombs ought not evoke fear, because it is imminently reasonable to have a healthy dose of apprehension toward nuke bombs. Nuke energy has been slandered for decades

[@Argonought1]

I'm curious if you'd be interested in reacting to a video by Neil Halloran called "The Controversial Science of Nuclear Winter". A well made video that talks about the exaggerated fear of nuclear winter.

[@NguyenMinh792]

But it’s undoubtedly dreadful

[@Argonought1]

@@NguyenMinh792 Yes, of course

[@MrTommispilot]

I believe, there was a calculation of the princeton university with a similar outcome.

[@TehSmokeyMan]

Seems like they were using updated models (there are even theories of a possible nuclear summer following nuclear winter; a catastrophic global warming event due to greenhouse gas release after the decaying biomatter thaws out. Something that could be as unpleasant as the nuclear winter itself). And fair enough, we luckily don't keep enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons as we did during the peak of the cold war, I can still imagine a best case scenario being horrendously uncomfortable for mankind and the planet... Best to keep those nukes safely tucked away and not use them... Although.....Devils advocate in me says; Controlled nuclear winter versus current global warming?😋😆 (although that'd probably be as useful as the rest of the ideas in project Plowshare)

[@spvillano]

An aside, I can attest to Czar Bomba, was born a week after that inanity was detonated, some residue remains literally within my bones, as confirmed during a thyroid scan. The rest of the atmospheric testing era, well, if there is a hell, I'll be shoveling coal on their fucking asses. As for Texan weather, been there, done that in Qatar, last half of July onward turned into a steam bath, the rest of the time you don't even notice sweating until walking into air conditioning and well, it's like being under a bucket of water that is the sweat you didn't notice. Literally. My wife and I actually loved the place. My garden made eden look platry, buried sweat lines, sunshades, my watermelons grew larger than most thoughts, my corn, even more. Loved the melon, the rest was basil, cucumbers, chili peppers, tomatoes, in a few square meters,

[@1331km1]

The whole idea with humanity 's. Descendants thousand plus years in the future, thinking that a nuclear war is a battle between gods is kind of some of the theories people have about ancient Hindu mythology And the idea of advanced ancient civilizations that had nuclear power

[@andrewdemarco3512]

Those southern countries would still have all their machinary and technology, libraries, and knowledge, though fuel might be scarce, they would not be starting from nothing

[@JohnDoe-f8q]

Life wouldn't be worth living anyway if the worst case scenario happened. No point trying to live underground or move to southern Argentina. For all intents and purposes, if said event occurs, it's over. More reason to understand why we shouldn't be dumb and do it.

[@colinmacdonald5732]

I'm old enough to remember when the nuclear winter got absolutely debunked back in the late '80s. Carl Sagan was one the savants behind it, some of real experts got a look at the calculations and were a bit bewidered that an astronomer was going outside his area of expertise and straying into atmospheric physics. Anyhoo, ONE study has come out claiming to show nuclear winter recently and KZbinrs have pounced on it to produce clickbit, but it's assumptions are VERY questionable.

[@brianfox771]

Yup! Agreed. Since that report came out, we've had huge volcanic eruptions, the Kuwaiti oil fields burn, and massive forest fires globally. No nuclear-like winters. There was like what, 2-3 summers in a row with most of N. America was enveloped in forest fire smoke? No nuclear-like winter. That said, there will still likely be famines and food shortages just from the severe level of destruction of infrastructure, industrial capacity and supply chains.

[@HurairahHomestead]

The way I was told it would happen was that 'nuclear winter' would be from all the radiation. Yes...RADIATION causes 'nuclear winter'. The thing is, we just don't know what would happen.

[@Gsoda35]

Sales will plummet if Target is still there as the bombs fall.

[@AndrewMefford]

I totally get the concern people have over the possibility of nuclear war as I am concerned myself. I just don't get the over exaggeration, to me it's more a disservice than anything. Just my two cents. : )

[@aurorathekitty7854]

I'm pro nuclear weapons if it's used for an Orion drive.

[@robertmiller9735]

In that case they're not really weapons.

[@ModernVintage33]

Cobalt laced devices maybe… but not winter that would be ground detonation or high yield shallow subterranean detonation. The most efficient/logical are air burst and exo-atmospheric. M.A.D. is just an idiotic stance

[@pazsion]

chernobyl and fukushima both triggered cooling tmi too as well as hitoshima nagasaki and the czar bomba

[@pazsion]

atmosphic testing was really dumb considering this... pulsing nuclear reactors has some times caused failures too.

[@d4rk0v3]

You weren't listening. You don't need multi-megaton weapons to get soot into the stratosphere. All you need is a firestorm. They will generate a self sustaining updraft that produces a pyrocumulous cloud where it can deposit soot into the stratosphere. Also, no, most of that soot wouldn't just fall back down in a few days. Soot that high up can easily be held aloft by winds and updrafts. It would take more than a few days. It really annoys me how authoritatively you speak on things and just assume that what you know is correct instead of going to check their sources and do a little research.

[@drarko91]

we need "We do not want to stress test this" on a shirt If you are interesting in a fictional scenario of how humanity could recover from a practical anihilation, check Dr Stone, an anime with scientific bases

[@Lukas_Skala]

could you please get a full hd camera because this one is pretty bad

[@arminiuschatti2287]

70K years ago, the amount Toba eruption caused a winter that reduced humanity’s population to 3,000. Your voice along with others MAY encourage the crazies to commit to Nuclear War.

[@John-ir2zf]

Side note, I see the starvation death toll being a good bit lower than 5 billion in a full scale exchange. And why you ask ? Well......cannibalism. I see 2.5 billion dying, and the other 2.5 billion utilizing those calories 🤷‍♂️

[@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA]

Plus more would die from extra resource wars from countries that need food that are starving

[@John-ir2zf]

@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA perhaps.... but I see those nations taking the "easy route" and utilizing the extra people that can't be fed as feed. Far easier to do that than to reassemble a likely blasted apart military, equip the military with food 🤔 and fuel to go on pillaging raids of other nations.

[@Yora21]

Remembering pictures from the end of World War 2 in Europe, bricks will be the one resource of which there will be no shortage at all.

[@ProfShibe]

So brick pie it is for dinner

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

When Terminator 2 came out they used about half the population 3 billion would die

[@tomwimmenhove4652]

Another problem with exaggerating in cases like this is that it might cause people to trust science less. I'd be very interested in you doing a video about climate change, by the way.

[@emmithanstudios9042]

Don't forget the 'false fall' for Texas.

[@bulgingbattery2050]

The worst thing about nuclear war is PRESTON GARVEY

[@pyeitme508]

Maybe

[@ArtemisShanks]

The US has ~2500 active nuclear warheads and Russia has ~4200, (probably in significant disrepair due to lack of maintenance). Worst case scenario, if a large fraction were detonated in a short period of time, Kurtzgezagt’s video seems an accurate assessment.

[@MrKbtor2]

The really scary thing is all the hundreds of damaged/destroyed nuclear plants that will contaminate the landscape more than the weapons themselves (assuming mostly airbursts).

[@m4tt_314]

You need to feed the livestock too…

[@hopwaffles]

That channel has turned into a propagand a machine, it is just fearmongering at this point.

[@MusicByFabi]

Why do you make those commented videos? Is it because you don't like kurzgesagt? Just answer that to yourself

[@arnold3768]

Kurzgesagt is so annoying with their anti-nuclear weapon narrative, I cringed so hard when they compared the mushroom cloud to a demon. In one of their vids they said that countries should dismantle their arsenals and vow to never use them again. Do they actually believe this is possible? Do they think about the possible consequences of such an act? Why can't their nuke-related content be unbiased and neutral...

[@ProfShibe]

I mean given they’re humans and don’t want to die horrific deaths it’s pretty obvious why they portray them that way…call it a bias but it seems fair to me 🤷‍♂️

[@arnold3768]

@@ProfShibe unfortunately acting purely on human emotion will not get you far in life, you need to put some thinking too. If they want to convince that the existence of nukes is bad then they should do an actual well-researched video on it instead of just playing on emotion.

[@ThorirPP]

I feel like that is bit of a bad faith take from a video that is a dramatization of the worst case result of a nuclear war, not a video about nuclear weapons in general. Like, Kurzgesagt has always been anti-war. Just like they have always been pro-nuclear power. They have also always used colourful language in their description of things, and like being dramatic at times even when being educational. What do you actually want them to do here? Talk about MAD or something? About nukes ending WWII? The cold war? This is a video about nuclear winter dude, even people pro nukes don't deny the destruction they can cause, that is the whole basis of MAD to begin with. And they are not gonna shy away from the devastation a worst case scenario would cause, just like they are not going to overstate the devastation as completely destroying us or such About the idea of countries dismantling nukes, other than I feel like it doesn't really matter for this video... so what? Kurzgesagt has always been pretty overly optimistic about the future, even when describing bleak situations today. Countries actually deciding to say no to nukes is unrealistic, especially with the current geopolitical situation, but why does an educational science channel saying we objectively shouldn't have super powerful weapons pointed at countries and cities ready to fire trouble you so much? What does it matter?

[@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA]

The existence of nukes is bad theres no helpful reason to have nuclear weapons ZERO unless we got aliens or asteriods to blow up lol@@arnold3768

[@arnold3768]

@@ThorirPP And I feel you got my comment wrong. I think this is a good educational video about nuclear winter and they should've kept it like that. They should've kept it emotionally neutral. I did not want to hear their political opinions for which they've made no good arguments for. That mushroom cloud-demon thing and "would they ever build nukes again"? Like duh, of course they would 😒 It only reminded me of that horrible take about countries dismantling their arsenals. A childish idea that will obviously never materialize. Like, there's a line between optimism and straight-up delusion.

[@chefnerd]

Regarding supply chains' fragility: it needs just one ship getting stuck in a key point to cause severe problems :D

[@I_Am_Transcendentem]

a constant barrage of blunders by Kurzegesagt

[@graceandnickgaming3996]

Hi

[@Judbutnotspud]

Ö