From: David Lubkin (extropy@unreasonable.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 02:24:25 MDT
At 09:32 PM 4/7/2002 -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote:
>I was unaware of any proof that the nuclear winter proposition had been
>found deficient. Even if it was, there's still radioactive fallout to
>consider. Not to mention that, if all urban areas were to be destroyed,
>the resulting knowledge base loss would extend back at least to the
>start of the Industrial Revolution - two and a half centuries, as my
>history book stated it.
Significant flaws were found in the nuclear winter papers. Basically,
their models were far too simplistic. The limitations were first proven by
subsequent atmospheric modelling on the Crays at Livermore but there are
also fundamental assumptions Sagan et al made that are untenable in the
face of what we know about geo-bio-atmo-eco- processes. One of us can dig
out our copies of the papers, but you should be able to find this stuff
easily on the web.
Next. All-out nuke everything is highly unlikely, and largely wouldn't
touch the southern hemisphere. In the north, there would be many cities
unaffected, or with a high number of survivors. And lots of people aren't
anywhere near a target, or the way the wind blows. Our knowledge base is
decentralized. It's in people's brains, in books, and in computers, and
enough of each would survive. Radioactivity decays. It spreads thinly
over the world. It is washed out by rain.
My guess is similar to Robert's -- maybe a couple decades delay.
I'm less sanguine about the recovery time after a pandemic bioengineered
attack. And I think there might be a multiplier effect if both happened at
the same time, or the plague just as we're recovering from the nukes.
-- David.
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