Willy Vereb

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

I guess. I'm no expert on this kinda stuff, so I can't really argue. I'd bet that we could still kill almost every human being on the planet if a full on nuclear war was started with the intention of killing everyone.

@FacePunch

Well, if suddenly without warning all nukes were launched and they successfully hit their target then the very least the major population centers would face something like 80-99% fatalities. Depending on how it's accomplished (how the nukes are concentrated).
Been a while since I last checked how large portion of the world is living in the largest cities but it'd be likely a considerable percentage of all humans on Earth.
The radiation and some environmental changes would also weigh on the survivors, along with the destruction of their government structure and key installations. The ensuring chaos and deaths would potentially match the numbers killed by the nukes.
There's a considerable chance such all out nuking would result in the destruction of modern civilization and that we must start over.
Though not guaranteed. The world is less centralized than you'd think.
Overall it'd be the worst event in human history.
Extinction, though? Unlikely.
Not even Einstein's famous "sticks and stones" quote.
I'm not encouraging all out nuclear war. It'd be terrible without a doubt.
I just say we seriously overestimate ourselves if we think detonating our nuclear stockpile could actually destroy Earth.
The planet is huge and it weathered worse.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

I really need to post more... Feeling a tad neglected in the IC

Edit, Willy. If you wish hard enough (and watch plenty of anime) anything is possible!!

@Monkeypants

I am pretty sure the GM would never allow this even if you were wishing hard enough for it, though.


Full scale nuclear war on the other hand can be a "good" way to end the NRP.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

Screw that nuke crap. I'll put engines on the moon and bump it towards earth!!!

@Monkeypants

I just wish to say that such idea would be impossible even if we use our entire stockpile of nukes in a giant Orion Drive network to push the Moon.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

@Willy Vereb



According to this webside here:http://web.net/~cnanw/a3.htm and the image posted above, there are more than enough nuclear weapons on the earth to destroy it. Russia alone, if it was in the mood, could wipe out multiple continents with its nuclear stockpile.

@FacePunch

Oh yeah.
And how many Tzar Bombas exist in the world? None.
Megaton yield stockpiles are also relatively small.
Besides, that "calculation" is deeply flawed because it uses the near total fatalities assumption of 5 PSI blastwave...which is completely useless for actually destroying anything in note.
That's the maximum range where a nuclear blastwave can potentially still ruin houses. Using it as an absolute measure is rather incorrect.
The geography of the Earth alone would work like a natural shelter against far-reaching blasts like that.
Or hell, just a house-sized hill.
The row of houses in your street would effectively absorb this pressure and leave only a fraction of this to the next row of houses. Especially if we count for the inverse square law.
This just further proves how exaggerated the fear of nukes had become.
We cannot literally destroy ourselves with them.
Maybe we can mess up the planet to be damn annoying to live in and destroy the population centers but anything further is just mere fantasy.
For the record we can barely use our nuclear stockpiles to defend ourselves against an average asteroid impact or comet that can land on Earth, even if we ignore the issue with the range of our missiles.
KT Impact which supposedly killed the dinosaurs? We'd be still fucked.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

Yeah but the entire concept of "mutually assured destruction" is what drove the Cold War. The idea that if you hit us, you better be sure we stay down.

@Odysseus

And the MAD concept got cleanly broken in WW3 here because all sorts of nations used nukes against each other.
This isn't the Cold War, neither our post Cold War modern world.
This is a post-WW3 setting and while not everybody and their long-dead mother threw nukes at each other, as described in the background stories of other nations, these happened "frequently enough" still.
Nuclear taboo is both the past and in another sense reaches new heights.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

No law against it, but if you use them, you shall be punished by the international community.

@MetalLover

That sounds almost like there's a law against it.
Nukes, like everything, is just a weapon. A powerful weapon but if not used to massacre cities then that's all it there's about it.
BTW, are depleted uranium rounds banned? Currently there's a potential for this because their use in hypervelocity projectiles effectively makes them like a chemical weapon.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

I'd imagine you wouldn't want to use your nukes for anything. They ruin the country they're launched into making conquest impossible, and you open yourself up to being nuked by that nation or its allies. The only reason to ever use them would be because someone else did, or you want to destroy the entire planet in a massive nuclear war.

@FacePunch

You overestimate the power of nukes.
We can drop thousands of nuclear weapons on Earth and it barely changes anything.
Actually, in the name of nuclear tests we already did. Btween 1995 to 2053 the nations through the world performed 2053 nuclear tests.
That is, dropping 2053 nukes on Earth, lead by the USA to a considerable degree.
Sure, megaton yield tests were just a tiny percentage of those but so are the ratio of megaton warheads in comparison to the rest.

Radiation poisoning is an issue but people live in Hiroshima even now and did even some years after the bombing.
And since I talk about clean nukes (no radioactive material is left on the site to contaminate the area) this issue is practically null, too.
Nukes are also nothing really close to apocalyptic. Their capability to destroy an entire city (in case of higher yield strategic warheads) is terrible but you would need billions or even more nuclear warheads to ever cover the surface of Earth with them.
Another note is that since countermeasures improved drastically the chance of successfully landing a nuclear warhead is diminishing unless somebody goes out of his way to launch insane amount of them at once.
If anything since in WW3 nukes were used it'd clear away some if not all of the overexaggerated fear of them.
Make no mistake. Nukes are powerful. A strategic nuke used in population centers can exhaust all war crime offenses you can think of in almost any conventional wars and do it at once.
But annihilating a nation? At best in figurative sense by eliminating their governing body and key industries.
If the USA would ever turn into a crazy omnicidical nation their current stockpile is barely enough to literally annihilate a smallish nation like my country.

So yeah, use of strategic nuclear warheads on cities is practically equal to a war crime.
Using tactical warheads in battle? With the radiation poisoning removed it could be a matter of escalation.
If a nation is pushed enough they could try that against an enemy army.
It'd be somewhat comparable to using chemical weapons in WW2 though. You give the authorization for the enemy to use their own tactical warhead stockpiles to use against your army (or even your city centers if they don't realize they would be overstepping their boundaries).

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

A different note, nukes.
What would be the current stance on nuclear weapons?
They were used in WW3 and many nations have stockpiles even now.
Are nuclear weapons allowed but refrained from as it prompts the other nation to similarly use nukes?
Or is there an international law preventing nukes?
I'm just wondering.
Personally I think the latter would be counterintuitive.
Though I say this because I have tactical nuclear artillery shells and even tank shells (mind it, the two are effectively the same diameter).
Antimatter-induced "clean" fusion nukes could be also the way for future nukes. Greater or more compact power without the fallout or other drawbacks.

Of Iron and Coal - An Industrial Revolution Nation Roleplay

I may take the Austrian Empire, unless we are allowed to claim alternate historical nations.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

In regards to space, a colony on the moon isn't too far fetched. A private company is planning on launching a manned mission to Mars in 2020, and are going to establish a small permanent settlement there.

It was all over he news last year.

@FacePunch

It isn't farfetched, indeed.
But if the GM wants the space colony craze to be taking place during the RP that's an understandable idea, too.
Maybe the wartime recovery cost so much for the nations that they can only begin colonizing the Moon and Mars just now.

Age of Rebirth (Post WW3)

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

Wut. You know that we aren't that far into the future.

@The Grey Warden

2050
We already roughly have the means for this to happen.
We only need time and the actual effort.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

No, they haven't come into existence, yet, I was going to use this as a possible point in the Cold War, a new Space race.

@MetalLover

Yeah, that sounds reasonable to me.

On a different note with the hi-capacity batteries I think electronic propulsions could gradually become popular.
Let's say the 7th generation of fighters would actually rely on these instead of typical jets. And even the 6th generation may use electromagnetic fields instead of propellers to compress the gases. This would make the jet less prone to mechanical failures and may even become overall cheaper to maintain.

Also I plan to have drones using magnetic propulsion which could be a reality even now if not for the lack of hi-capacity batteries and other power sources. Magnetohydrodynamic engines are already working and about as good as typical screw-operated craft. The only reason they're slower because generators add extra weight and in general we have some ways until we get decent electric power...which isn't a big issue by 2050 of this setting.
I again remind you of the railgun tanks and CNT-baed fuel cells which makes energy-reliant technology more portable.
Again, energy is not free. Energy is not universally better than combustion/mechanical methods. The point is they are an alternative which if used right can be advantageous.

For example I plan to have "Kuvik" drones that are small (~2-3m diameter) flying saucers using magnetic propulsion and run on CNT-supercapacitors to be active for 1-2 hours at best.

<Snipped quote by MetalLover>

Did somebody say Space Race? I'm up for a Space Race. Let's have a Space Race. That sounds like a good idea. I'm not biased at all, why do you ask?

@Keyguyperson

Oh yeah, space race will be pretty fun.