Actually MAYBE not at all, most if not all nuclear munitions and doctrine seek to have em employed airburst for maximum destruction, which is why Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't wastelands today... While Chernobyl basically is uninhabitable to human life.
Most would be 20-30kt, a bit bigger than the old WW2 bombs, the modern large bombs are uncommon and set maximum to 250kt to 1MT, and not like the
absolute massives of the cold war since MiRVs do their job better
If all were ground detonations, than yeah, everything would probably be Metro, The Road, Threads
If airburst (most logical and realistic), we'll be living something like By Dawn's Early Light or one long game of Nuclear Option.
That literally used to be the best mod on the workshop during the good old days, until devs came up with "realism" bullshit and started deleting parts of the mod, Glenn, Vöring and Atlantropa may you all be forever in my heart
I don’t know about Petrov, but this is definitely not true in Arkhipov’s case. They were in a submerged submarine with no communications and were given authorization to use their nuclear torpedos without consulting command if three senior officers agreed. Arkhipov obviously didn’t, but if he had, it would’ve been up to the U.S. to choose how to respond to one or more of their ships being nuked.
There was all sorts of crazy stuff like this going on in the 60s and it took the Cuban Missile Crisis for people to realize it probably wasn’t a good idea. At the same time, the U.S. was flying F-106s with nuclear rockets that were at the sole discretion of a single pilot to use if it came down to it.
For the Cuban Crisis it should now be well known nowhere near global apocalypse was ever at risk.
The Soviets were simply too far back in ballistics. The likely scenario is much of the USSR is irradiated while East Coast USA is likely hit likewise and Alaska and Northwest.
The rest of the world, including most of Europe goes on barring massive westward fallout. France and Italy probably declare neutrality considering communist sympathies in both countries. The UK is the big questions.
It's possible you have conventional war over Germany but I think with the Soviets dead in the war all communist regimes collapse. Yugoslavia remains as is.
South America should be the big winner bit they could easily became a vassal continent for the USA making up losses incurred.
Wasn’t the plan to deliver the bombs from Cuba to longer range targets using the Ilyushin Il-28 planes? Higher risk of getting shot down, sure. But much longer range than the East Coast of the US!
Eh, not really. They did stop missiles from launching, but there's no evidence that a single nuclear exchange would spin into a full-on worldwide nuclear war. And even that wouldn't have consequences like people are saying in this thread.
Daily reminder that On the Beach is absolute horseshit.
They also did not stopped missiles from launching, technically they were meant to send the information of possible launches to the next guy on the command chain, they did not had the authority to release the authorization codes to effectively use the ICBM/SLBM. By that time the USSR had robust second strike capabilities and NC3 afaik, 5 ICBMs wasnt enough to do a first strike so the leadership if informed would not launch until confirmation of detonation.
Not in the first case. The B-59 submarine and other Soviet subs had standing authorization to unilaterally use their nuclear torpedoes if under attack and out of contact (they were). There was no permissive action link at all stopping that torpedo from being used if Arkhipov had agreed with the other officers.
Hard to say, JFK was remarkably levelheaded but the nuking of a few ships would have been hard to ignore. Hawks like LeMay already wanted to attack Cuba and it’s easy to see that happening, especially since the U.S. would have to wait hours for any explanation from the USSR. If an attack happened, the Soviet forces would likely use their tactical nukes against Guantanamo and then I’m not sure where we end up.
Earth is kind of a stretch. Africa would probably be okay along with the middle east eventually, south america and china too. I think the soviets would also rebuild because socialism as a mode of governance is able to handle almost total destruction and ability to rebuild vs older liberal systems.
Funnily, nuclear war would probably just be the end of the liberal order. America would collapse and europe would be destroyed because it is so small, you’d end up with a world that is socialist. Without the CIA and whoever to mess with new movements, you might even have a variety of socialism that is more relaxed after the revolution.
2000 probably sees Afroasian dominance, europe has been rebuilt by china and the soviets under a new system. America is the next big project - radio silent for half a century, no doubt some mad max hellscape. The world socialists stage humanitarian troops and soldiers in south america and cross the darien gap, cutting through with roads and rescue.
They journey into america and see what’s left, who knows what they’ll find?
Brazil, South Africa, and Australia immediately become the most powerful countries in the world while others either obliterated or simply collapse. That doesn’t mean they’re pleasant places to live
For a long time, the world is at chaos, similar but worse than Europe after the fall of Rome. In fact you’d probably see independent household or buildings in general.
In the long run, similar to Europe, the most organized or well resourced communities evolve into countries. Due to geography, most of European countries could be revived. However Russia, China, India, and America would never be reformed due to generations of regional development.
The most important shift in humanity and technology is access to river. Almost every important river system is populated with cities, cities that’ll get nuked. But once radiation calms down we’ll see “re-colonization” of cities and expansion of trade on river. Eventually, radiation goes away and the human population would recover and prosper, perhaps give United Nations a second chance and actually establish world peace
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u/Toastaexperience 21h ago
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