So as y’all probably know, there’s a bit of a kerfluffle right now in Ukraine, and it looks like it might draw the US and Russia into a little war. Worse case, it could turn nuclear and cause quite a ruckus.
There are lots of YouTube channels and other media predicting the end of the world in a nuclear holocaust. They seem almost giddy about the prospect, and seem to be trying their best to scare the bejeezus out of everyone. And I’m sick and tired of it.
So let me get this out of the way first: It is possible a conflict could happen. And there would be death and destruction. Nothing I’m going to say in this post should minimize that. But will it be the end of the world? Probably NOT.
So part of the problem here is that many people are looking at the whole thing through a cold-war, 1962 Cuban missile crisis mentality. And back then, the situation was significantly worse than it is now. There were 70,000 nuclear warheads, and most of them were significantly more powerful than most of the warheads that are deployed now. If we had gotten into a conflict then, it very weill might have been the “end of the world”, and would have been a cataclysmic event.
But this is not 1962.
There have been significant reductions in both number and power of warheads over the intervening sixty years, and maybe because of that crisis. There are 11,000 now, and the number actually deployed is something around 3,000. And nearly all of them are of a power of 1MT (one million tons of TNT) or below.
Now, this is powerful, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not city destroying powerful. It’s “everything in a small area will be flattened, everything in a slightly larger area will be partly flattened, and everyone else will just get a light show and have to stay inside for a few days until the fallout subsides”. For the vast majority of people, it will be – not a nonevent, but a survivable event.
And even the foreseen agricultural collapse may not be as bad as they think. Fallout is the worse from ground bursts, but most targets won’t be ground bursts. This is because while that maximizes local destructive force, it minimizes the blast wave, and that wide area destructiveness is what the idiots that are planning these strikes are going for. There may be difficulties with food, but the forecasts of five billion people starving is probably a bit overdone.
Russia does have a few much more powerful bombs, and they might lay waste to the largest cities, like NY, LA, or DC. So I’m not saying it’s going to be great for everyone. But I’m saying it’s probably not an apocalypse, probably not an armageddon, and with a bit of foresight, preparation, and cool-headedness, the odds are that you’ll be fine. Or at least you’ll survive with some moderate levels of inconvenience.
So with all that said, I’m really getting annoyed, nay, pissed off at the people who are trying to scare me and everyone else with the idea that if there’s a nuclear war, you’re going to see a flash of light and that’s it, or have to starve to death or something like that. I’m not saying those aren’t possibilities, but they’re not by any means foregone conclusions, and it does no one any good to scare the crap out of them, don’t you think?
This isn’t 1962. The situation is different. The treaties had some effect. We are in a better position now than then, even if the worst happens.
Now, with all that said, Ukraine (Zelenskyy), Putin, and Biden are all being irresponsible pricks, and they’d better check themselves before we have to test all of these assumptions. I personally would rather not find out what food rations taste like, thank you very much.