From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 10:37:43 MDT
I will defer to Amara's references that nuclear winter may
remain a serious threat to humanity. It is interesting that
in 2000, they were still calling for more studies.
Currently I believe it is policy for Russia and the U.S.
not to have the missles targeted at each others cities
(someone correct me if they know otherwise). So that would
prevent any accidental launch from escalating us into
a nuclear winter situation. So nuclear winter only seems
to be a risk if the U.S. and Russia get back to a situation
where they are playing MAD. I don't see that happening
anytime soon (in part because NW does seem to be a risk).
It seems to make sense that an extropic goal could be to
get the actual number of weapons down to a level that
could not cause a nuclear winter. We do seem to be
headed in that direction which is good.
That still doesn't deal with the question of whether
humanity could survive a nuclear winter. Presumably
it would have some months to prepare and arrange
survival centers (presumably clustered around any
remaining nuclear reactors) and as was pointed out
the southern hemisphere would likely be much less
affected.
It is interesting though that having nuclear reactors,
fuel supplies for several years and sufficient materials
to construct large areas of greenhouses with artificial
lighting would seem to be essential components for countries
that wish to survive *either* a large nuclear exchange or
a large NEO impact.
Robert
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