Why It's Impossible To Win a Nuclear War
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
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Nuclear war is a terrifying existential threat, but we shouldn't only fear the blasts because the ensuing smoke is the real killer.
LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Black carbon: groups of linked carbon atoms.
- Fallout: radioactive particles that are carried into the atmosphere after a nuclear explosion or accident and gradually fall back as dust or in precipitation.
- Jet stream: a narrow variable band of very strong predominantly westerly air currents encircling the globe several miles above the earth.
- Radiation: the emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles, especially high-energy particles which cause ionization.
- Weapon yield: the amount of energy released when that particular nuclear weapon is detonated, usually expressed as a TNT equivalent.
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REFERENCES
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“Global Effects of Mount Pinatubo.” Nasa.gov, NASA Earth Observatory, 15 June 2001,
earthobservato...
“Nuclear Tests--Databases and Other Material.” Johnstonsarchive.net, 2022, www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/
“NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein.” Nuclearsecrecy.com, 2013, nuclearsecrecy...
Robock, Alan. “Nuclear Winter.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 1, no. 3, 16 Apr. 2010, pp. 418-427, doi.org/10.100...
Robock, Oman, and Stenchikov. “Nuclear Winter Revisited with a Modern Climate Model and Current Nuclear Arsenals: Still Catastrophic Consequences.” J. Geophys. Res, vol. 112, doi.org/10.102...
Dr. Brian Toon, Personal Communication.
Xia, Lili, et al. “Global Food Insecurity and Famine from Reduced Crop, Marine Fishery and Livestock Production due to Climate Disruption from Nuclear War Soot Injection.” Nature Food, vol. 3, no. 8, 15 Aug. 2022, pp. 586-596, doi.org/10.103...
Imagine you're just chilling with your friends having dinner, and then suddenly you're vaporized because one guy 1000 miles away said something another guy 2000 miles away didn't like.
🤨
@@Blueaxolotl_dggykh What does that mean?
@@generaltom6850 tbh I forgot
Wars don’t work that way
Yeah wars don't work this way. But often times a few hundred people are enough to ruin the lives of millions of people.
My biggest fear about nuclear war is that I'll be too far away from it and have to go to work the next day.
Ah shit ..
@@alamba1165 bro was chiefin on that pack right after he survived
I guess that's why people move into major cities. In case of nuclear bombing their death will be fast and painless
lol
Or you could be like the guy who was nuked twice.
"Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.....well almost"
I noticed the ➡️ (Almost)⬅️🤔🤔
GOD DAMNIT, YOU GOT TO SAYING IT FIRST!
What reference is this
@@asgacc8789 fallout new Vegas
You knew exactly what I was going to say!
Way to go, ending 2022 on a positive note, thanks MinuteEarth!
Use another tsar bomba on a populated city & there we have the answer to end global warming 🧠🤫
And they say I'm a fool 😏😌
Imagine if a nuclear bomb went off 1 minute before New Years
News flash it’s 12:03 and no a bomb did not go off maybe next year it will go of one minute before happy new years
@@Somerandomduck_ only Bill Gates, wings of government and supermax prisoners will be around to bring in the new fear.
@@Somerandomduck_phineas, I know what we are going to be doing today
And with a big bang!
“Global temperatures drop by 16 degrees”
Frostpunk players: hey I’ve seen this one!
*the city must survive intensifies*
It's sawdust time
Unfortunately, lighting a giant pyre in the center of the city is significantly less efficient for heating than in frostpunk. Realistically, without the ability to grow food anywhere other than bunkers stocked until the climate can recover would be a death sentence. Even if you could feed everyone sawdust.
I am taking this opportunity to brag that I completed 3 scenarios in the game in survival mode recently. It was really really tough. Also in the seedling ark scenario I managed to save every ark
Mate the storm is coming will we survive it ?
Mindustry players: hmm sure those 16 impulse reactors should be enough to power a big city
Is the start a reference to adventure time ice king and Marcy? Nice touch if so
It definitely is, look at his hair
Rip Simon Petrikov
Yes
It's pretty FUCKING obvious...
Definitely.
the Adventure Time reference at the beginning is fantastic
oh my god, it is an adventure time reference!
Someone else saw it and I came to the comments to find you!
Simon!!
I knew I wasn't the only one who would notice!
Time?
The scariest part about nuclear weapons is the fact that the scariest part about nuclear weapons isn’t even the destruction or blast from the nuclear weapon, it’s what happens after!
That is contradictory, logically speaking, but still is “correct”
To prevent self-reference, shouldn't it be "The scariest part about nuclear weapons is the fact that the *_second_* scariest part about nuclear weapons isn’t even the destruction or blast from the nuclear weapon; it’s what happens after!"
I feel like the mad (maybe evil) scientist question here is, what amount of steady nuclear exploding would neatly counteract the current trend of climate warming.
And does it have to be cities?
Take all the tires and Trash and put it inside the Mojave Desert do some very precise calculations blows up with a nuke boom you have sold global warming and got rid of a bunch of trash
I'm sure there is no scenario here where this ends well, but I don't know the science behind it well enough.
I'd suspect there are other ways to release black carbon, but I'm also reasonably sure that it wouldn't solve the problem, and for some reason, likely make it worse.
like the video alludes to Its not the bombs directly causing the the the winter it's what there hitting, materials in urban areas that release black smoke that ends up creating the black carbon smoke/soot which blocks light/heat from reaching the surface thus causing cooling, so yes citys or where those types of materials are abundant
My little sister asked me this exact question and I genuinely don’t have a good answer. :/
The same question crossed my mind, but the thought of it is too horrifying to even consider.
you know if you talk about a man made form of global cooling, you really gotta mention why it's a bad idea to use it to counteract global warming.( assuming it is indeed a bad idea)
Because it is called climate change and not global warming for a reason. It is basically doing a lot more of what we are doing now, releasing butt tons of carbon into the air.
@@blackwing1362 yes it's called climate change, but the reality is the globe is getting warmer. so is releasing more carbon into the air the way we are doing now going to hit a tipping point and start cooling rather than heating? or is the nuclear winter caused by a different chemical composition that the stuff we are releasing now? my point is if you are going to say something could cool the planet it's worth spending a minute to address the issue.
Burning every major city in the world for 10 years of cooling isn't worth it. Not to mention, even if we did rebuilding would create way more CO2 right now because of all the concrete.
@@solsystem1342 well I wasn't talking about burning actual cities, just putting the equivalent chemicals into the atmosphere. still probably a bad idea, I just don't know how its a bad idea.
@@galacticmechanic1 There is indeed an idea of using sulfur dioxide to combat global warming
As for the carbon, it isn't what causes global warming, it's the carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide isn't nearly as harmful, and soot has short lifespan in the atmosphere so its effects aren't as strong
nuclear tests usually occur in places where there is very little to burn in the first place.
Except the live tests in Japan of course.
And those islands where the US blew up a bunch of peoples homes (though at least they weren't cartoonishly evil enough to not tell them first!)
@@mappingshaman5280 We are sorry, but we have to blow up your homes to test a weapon so destructive it would be pointless to use as everyone would be frozen.
I fixed your 69 likes issue.
@@mappingshaman5280Huh. The USSR moved people away and compensated them during the nuclear testings. Although, since the Tsar Bomba was so big, it didn't stop people from Finland being affected, despite it being 500 or something miles away.
They had to halve the Tsar Bomba's explosion in order to not do more damage.
Its not about winning, it's about sending a message.
E essa mensagem é "foda-se, todo mundo vai morrer agora por minha culpa. É uma mensagem meio estúpida né não
@@raiden4695 mais dai eu te pergunto se a mensagem fosse para a Argentina
@@LuizHenrique-zw5su pra que tacar uma bomba atômica na argentina, eles nem incomodam tanto, aí já seria desperdício
"People do not want words - they want the sound of battle - the battle of destiny." ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser
Thank you, most sincerely Mount Pinatubo. I was a ski instructor at Coronet Peak when it exploded - and the next three years were bumper snow years as a result.
Come back Pinatubo! We need you again!
0:01 Wait, is that Simon Petrikov from Adventure time?!
“I don’t know [what weapons will be used in the Third World War]. But I can tell you what they’ll use in the Fourth-rocks.”
-Albert Einstein
*spears
bomb them back to the stone age
@@tomclanys **sticks, and stones
guns, they'll have the knowledge to make them
I don't believe it was Big Alberto saying that
The radiation from a thermonuclear detonation dies down rapidly within weeks, not years. There is still higher background radiation than normal that will result in higher cancer rates, but not nearly what you hear about in popular culture.
*POP CULTURE LIED TO ME?!*
Source?
Very true. And another important detail is that the radiation radius is smaller than the fireball radius for strategic nukes (the high yield ones that would be used to bomb cities). The people directly affected by radiation would already be dead and the main problem radiation poses are increased rates of cancer and miscarriages.
@@Youngstomata Look up the 7-10 rule of thumb. For conventional nukes, the radiation approximately decreases by a factor of 10 for every 7 fold increase in time.
Compared to an hour after detonation, 7 hours later is 10 times less. 2 days later is 100 times less radiation. 14 weeks later is a 1000 times less radiation. If you have a decent basement or large building and 2 weeks worth of food and water, you can easily wait out the fallout.
thermonuclear bombs use minimal amount of radioactive materials to initiate the fusion explosion compared with the old fissile explosions that are 100% radioactive
0:12 Hey mate, that's Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, Spain. I live there. Please don't drop the thing
perdon amigo. The Russians already have the capital city of every nato nation targeted with a nuclear weapon.
:)
I heard somewhere the numbers on this were off. I think the original calculations back in the 70s and 80s overestimated the amount of ash released by the cities and thus exaggerated the death toll as a result. From what I heard a revised death toll would be between 300 million and 1 billion in a modern nuclear war and resultant winter, though I may be off.
What is not off is the belligerents. FU Russia and US with your endless wars of greed and conquest!!!!! You guys are the world's worst problem makers. Earth would be a better place if you guys disappeared (without WW3.)
Newer papers from around 2016 still also predicted massive starvation due to too many freezing days.
@Joshua Grahm The newer papers still have insufficient data. And any study with Owen Toon as an author is going to be erred on overestimating the effects.
Do note, we don't know how black the carbon from cities would burning would be; nor do we know if modern cities are even capable of forming firestorms.
Who would win: the 7 citations listed in the description of this video, or "I heard somewhere" 🤔
@@megapussi Neil Halloran went into better detail on this topic; czcams.com/video/KzpIsjgapAk/video.html
A few good things to note: Not all nuclear bombs would be dropped or launched, many would be intercepted and destroyed before reaching their targets and some would be duds and fail to detonate. The current estimates on a nuclear winter is 1-3 years with a very unlikely 10 years at the most extreme. Also, not everywhere would be affected the same way. The safest place I've been able to find is Chile or southernmost Argentina. All of this is speculation, though, because there are a lot of factors that we can't possibly predict. Wind currents, for example.
New Zealand is actually probably safer, it gets a more easy to live in climate and is so out of the way and non-threatening that sending nukes to it would be a waste of time, it also produces a LOT of food and is very stable, so it's government would probably survive.
@@rowbot5555New Zealand is close to China, the Phillipines, South China Sea, Indonesia, and Australia. Practically dooming it. Argentina on the other hand, is a stable producer of many foods and has lots of arable land, and is far away from any major targets.
Looks like it’s time for a video on why we aren’t intentionally aerosolizing carbon already!
Watch Kurzgesagt's video on solar geoengineering. It's a pretty balanced take on the subject.
Because it would block sunlight, which is needed for life. It would also reduce air quality
Because there is a 100% chance we screw it up and make things worse
Yes it's been thought of already.
Nope, it's still a bad idea and only delays solving the problem. It could be used as a last resort thing
Spraying aerosols into the atmosphere would be risky
Plus the climate has always experienced up and down changes, so don't worry about
Is that intended to be Simon and Marcy at the beginning there? I wasn't ready to remember all the feelings that episode of Adventure Time gave me today! How dare you invoke them, MinuteEarth! 😆
Worst of all, if nuclear war is possible, then given enough time it is statistically inevitable.
This will eventually happen unless we find some way to make it not possible
That requires an infinite amount of time to be true. Nuclear war will not be possible for an infinite amount of time, because, eventually, the Earth will be swallowed by the Sun.
Well paradoxically having fewer warheads increase the chance of nuclear war as some warmongering idiots on the other side might get the idea that they can win a nuclear war. On other other hand having more warheads increase the chance of accidents that may also lead to nuclear war. Thus to minimize the chance of nuclear war, ideally, a country should have just enough to maintain deterrence.
@@semicolontransistor US Air Force has already made calculations: it’s around 350 for the US. So it’s not accidental that China has around the same. A few hundred warheads are enough for deterrent
@@kosatochca
10k++ nuke warhead is overkill then.
@@kosatochca Would you mind sharing your source? I find it unlikely that the number you provide is the total number of nuclear weapons the US thinks it needs. It sounds like a reasonable number of warheads for ballistic missiles, but that's definitely way too low if you're talking about the entire arsenal. We still need lots of bombs and cruise missiles to ensure that an enemy wouldn't be able to take a large number of our weapons out before they could fire. Bombs and cruise missiles tend to have much smaller explosive yields than warheads for ballistic missiles so more than one would need to be dropped on large targets.
This video was so terrifying, it gave me heartburn. Not even the pun at the end helped.
You and me both! 😱
I understand that nukes are really scary and that's kind of their point. For example Putin is "sabre rattling" to keep legitimacy high at home and to scare the general populace in Europe/US in hopes that they won't support backing Ukraine. He's talking big while at the same time making sure not to actually make any moves that would indicate the usage of nukes. For example when he's talking about moving nuclear capable weapons it doesn't actually mean anything for one simple reason. Basically all of Russias missiles for example are nuclear capable, it's not the missiles it's the warheads that can be installed that are special. But there's an even bigger reason why you can rest easy.
Nukes aren't there to be used, they're a deterrence. Countries have very public nuclear doctrines where they outline the use cases for nukes. Simplified they are there to counter existential threats. In the case of Russia their nuclear use cases can be distilled to a) if they're nuked b) if someone tried to distrupt their ability to use their nukes c) if the sovereignty of Russia is threatened i.e. NATO tries to march on Moscow.
The nuclear taboo is so strong that no nation will break it outside the most extreme circumstances. And even before that they will give very explicit warnings that tell the other side to back down. France even has a mininuke that's specifically designed to make it clear that they're super serious and the other side better back down and negotiate or they're doing the whole Armageddon thing. Further evidence of the strength of the taboo is that both nations and individuals have consistently not used nukes even when they could have. For example India had nukes before Pakistan and easily could have used them. But they didn't, because of the nuclear taboo. On an individual level if you want nightmare fuel read up on the two cases where singular Soviet officers prevent probable armageddons.
TLDR Nuclear war would be very bad and the idea is super scary but the possibility of one actually breaking out is very small and everyone involved (even Putin if you concentrate on his actions instead of his words) is actively working to prevent one. So unless Biden starts suddenly talking about wanting to ride an Abrams all the way to Moscow you can sleep safe 😊
I wouldn't worry about it, the science about this has been debunked thoroughly for decades.
Like 15 nuke can start a ice age
@@korakys Yep! If 1500 kt could start a -2 drop in temperatures, we should all have dropped like cattle from Tambora. And it only took us down 6 degrees, for like 6 years (I think that's the number, don't quote me) 60 megatons of explosive force, not to mention the amount of ash expelled probably being many times what a 60-megaton explosion could *ever* release.
Hopefully the human race is smart enough to not end the world
unfortunately the human race isn't even smart enough to STOP trying to end the world. climate change makes conflict, including nuclear conflict (say between india and pakistan) more likely. and even without that, our current emissions are still in the category "trying to end the world".
пастыри человечества достаточно коварны и кровожадны, чтобы сделать это. Им не нужно такое количество людей, которое есть сейчас
No, nukes are not at the hand of human race
It's at the hand of nation leaders
And we know some of them are selfish and self-centered.
Could had sayed that sooner
We aren't....
so fallout would be more accurate if there was snow everywhere?
3:35 I can feel my stomach dropping looking at that graphic.😶
i found a new argument for climate regulations in this video.
1,5°C climate goal seems so little to many. whats the diffrence between 3 and 1,5 - hard to show a normy.
but if a iceage is 7°C colder then 1,5°C/year is GIANT
It's difficult to say anything precise about what a 1,5°C world would look like.
I mean 7C is huge. That means most Northern temperate climates are now freezing for 9 months of the year, and that isn't accounting for the major change in weather patterns that would occur as well, which would just make those Northern Climates even colder.
16C is ridiculous to think about. That would make most of the world's population live in perpetual winter. As summer highs would now match winter highs, and winter highs would now be that much colder. Most of the world would become permafrost.
3C is a catastrophic change in global temperature increase. 3C is realistically where we will end up, and that is nothing short of a catastrophe. Just search "Climate Tipping Points", so many get triggered at 3C. Possibly ones like the Thwaites Glacier are already triggered, which is an additional 2 feet of sea level rise, more than tripling current rise, all rather suddenly, in about a span of 5 years.
And this isn't hard to imagine either. We are currently, at 1C, experiencing global droughts and global record-breaking heatwaves. We hit 50C here last year and became tied with death valley for the hottest place in North America, and was momentarily the hottest place on earth, and I live above the 45th parallel in a rainforest. This past year we saw both the Artic and Antarctic hit record-breaking temperatures, on the same day. Things are way out of wack, and we are hoping for a 2C change, or twice what we currently have, which is probably enough to fully melt all glaciers on the planet.
@@8is yes But If 7C is an iceage Then 1,5C is 21% of a iceage.
@@josephsalomone amazing comment. Thanks
It means theres an event so vast and cold it drops global temperatures, and may distort some natural phenomena
I've actually thought of a possible nuclear contingency. A series of massive, deep-drilled underground cities (they would have to be able to hold at least 200 people each, so that genetic variation still exists) which would grow food using UV lights, and probably be powered by either geo-thermal, nuclear (slightly risky), or wind power (would require surface maintenance)
geothermal would be the best option honestly, wind power is way too unreliable. As for nuclear, it's not even the 'risk' of a nuclear accident but getting fuel would be difficult.
I suspect wind would be entirely unfeasible. Nuke probably wouldn't be so bad as one might think, assuming these cities are put together by governments that have access to fisile elements, as it wouldn't take too much storage to have enough fuel for 50-100 years, during which time hopefully the surface would get back to livable conditions. Geothermal probably would make the most sense though, since i'm pretty sure the main drawback is having to drill way down, and since you're already drilling way down anyway
city of ember much? lol
If we (The US) had just kept funneling funds into the SDI, we wouldn't have to worry about this anymore lol
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no Ueah they just put most of it into the Air force and the Navy
I loved the Simon and Marceline in the first frame of the video!
I didn't know those were supposed to be them.
And they said there is no easy solution to global warming.
If anyone will save us from global warming its Putin!
I'm sure some ecofascist thought global dimming was a good idea.
It is not possible to cancel global warming out with a one time nuclear war. The carbon sooth stays in the air for much shorter than the effects of CO2. So you get a cooling period of around a decade, but then the global warming will take the upper hand again. Maybe even exacerbated by the CO2 from the fires, and the destroyed ozone layer.
The black sooth has decreased the albedo of earth, meaning it has heated up more. Maybe after a long time, this heated high atmosphere can also heat the ground extra? (just my idea)
The fair solution is to nuke the worst polluting city, maybe one city per multiple years.
Jim the glass half-full guy
This is so temporary that you need to regularly nuke tons of stuff to keep the ash flowing, not even volcanos can give enough ash to make a long term temperature change so what makes you think we can? But as the video said the temporary temperature fall would ruin crop yields and suck
Did the firebombing of cities during WW2 release significant black carbon into the stratosphere?
According to some model by Alan Robock the firebombing in WW2 should have resulted in a temperature drop of 0.1-0.2 °C. It was a bit colder than you might expect in the years after the war, but it wasn't found to be significant in their study. So, maybe it happened.
@@kedrednael interesting, thanks for the info
I believe the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden are the only two that resulted in firestorms that made it to the stratosphere.
The answer to your question is yes but it definitely wasn't much compared to a full nuclear launch.
Recent studies actually found this would have very limited consequences not just on the temperature but also on everything else, as due to new data we know estimates were way off in how long smoke particles would remain in the atmosphere.
That said I'd prefer people believed the nuclear winter legend and its pressure prevented their use, rather than people not being scared and using the nukes.
Edit: lots of typos
Post sources pls
I think that nuclear winter always was a (justifiably) politically motivated theory. Science has authority and nuclear winter was a scientific sheen on the truth that we can really never use those weapons.
@breakfastallday Can you back your conspiracy theory with any evidence?
Recent studies my asshole.
Ok let's disregard nuclear winter. How about the fact that 90% of the global food supply is dependent on fertilizers, pesticides, non pollinating seeds and farming equipment that originates primarily in the US, China, Europe, Russia and Japan. All of whom would become party to the chitshow. The advances stemming from the green revolution allowed the global population to reach 8 billion today. Without modern agriculture the global population would struggle to sustain 1.5-2 billion people. And here is the kicker, from what has been revealed with the declassified docs so far. We know that both sides would target each others agricultural production capacity. So yeah, death toll in the 4-6 billion. No nuclear winter required.
Dude smashed my heart in the first second, my man Simon
*slowly growing ball of hot plasma in the distance*
Oh yeah, that thousand degree bubble of really hot stuff? Not at all dangerous to human health, it’s the radiation you need to be worried about 😉
0:01 is that supposed to be Simon and Marceline?
Yes
If it's any comfort, the projections are that IF there was a nuclear war, it would be a limited exchange, not everyone throwing everything they have at one time.
The Adventure Time reference made my jaw drop...
The flash from a nuclear weapon in Japan made my great cousin go blind.
Live in central Brazil, average 30C temperatures around here. Maximum 46c, minimum 2C. I think many would survive down here. In an event of a global nuclear showdown, the world will be soccer and samba mutants.
Kkkkk
as a australian i see this as an absolute win
If you are standing inside the blast radius , it most certainly will make you no longer living.
Literally vaporised.
Hmmmm you sure?.. you shouldn't spread fake & baseless rumours on this science channel
For reference: a 30 degrees Celsius hot day in nuclear winter gets cooled down to a pathetic, cold 14 degrees Celsius
Thats not all it does, if you know how connected global temperatures are with the climate and water, I hope thats not what you're implying
I know how it works, I just don’t know how to explain it
Why is cold pathetic? :(
With pathetic I mean weak
With weak I mean it’s not strong, the temperature is weak
Like I said, I don’t know how to explain it, I think I meant it as a metaphor
I have a problem with the point that's made at ~2:20.
First the calculation is presented that 1500 Kilotons of total explosion power (so a mere 1.5 Megatons) would already be enough to put over 5 Million tons of black carbon into the air. First of all I'd really wanna see this calculation because I am not sure if I believe that 15 100Kt explosions can put over 5 MILLION TONS of black carbon into the air.
Then the doubt about this calculation is countered by saying "Yea sure, we already detonated more nukes with more power than that but all those detonations were done high up in the air/in remote locations". This shows that for this video the assumption is: every nuke will be detonated on the floor.
However depending on what you want to destroy, a surface detonation is by far not the best option and we have seen with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Surface detonations aren't really the way to go because a vast majority of the explosive power would go just into the ground instead of into an explosion that flattens and whole city.
So as long as you don't want to destroy one very specific very resilient target, surface detonations make no sense whatsoever because you will waste a vast majority of the explosive power of your very expensive nuke.
Detonating "high in the air" is a bad reason for not contributing to nuclear winter indeed.
This video assumes that firestorms form when cities are nuked. Nukes do not need a ground detonation for that, it is probably even more likely when the nukes are detonated at their optimal altitude which could be 1 or 2 km high.
They should not have said "High up in the air" as a reason for the test not creating a nuclear winter. It only matters that they did not create firestorms.
Ah yes winter wonderland for the holiday spirit
Ironically the fact they are so powerful has stopped other wars because since they are so powerful no one wants to attack in fear of the nuclear bomb
Wow, I used to be all for nuclear war but now I've reconsidered.
@@ghostryydr Prob hating Russians in cold wars
This comment is hilarious and underrated
so glad you've reconsidered!
I used to be against nuclear war but now I've redonsidered
I mean, that is the only logical conclusion that one can unironically make.
Only a pretense of a nigh-apocalyptic situation can bring an actual, meaningful, long-lasting change to the world.
Our world, as we know it, would never become what it is right now if not for WW2.
The society has became a lot less violent (in general) than throughout the entirety span of human history.
Medicine and technology advanced rapidly because of the war.
In many ways, any wide-scale war, nuclear or not, would lead to some positive externalities, ultimately. That is, of course, if some meaningful fraction humanity is capable of surviving that.
So, in a somewhat dark utilitarian view, world may NEED nuclear war at some point to progress.
Of course, it would be ideal if such extreme shakedown/reset is not necessary at all, and we can wake up tomorrow (or someday) to a beautiful, content, violence-free world. But what is ideal and what works best in practice are often different things.
I can totally see some perfectly valid arguments as to “support the war”.
Not to support or incite the war, but more so as to reflect on it auspiciously.
Video - Frames with Nuclear explosions and fear
Bg music - Fun Jolly
I like the adventure time reference.
I love how the thumbnail references adventure time.
Dang, now I hate nuclear blasts!
Funny thing is that even though the atmosphere will be loaded with black carbon, most of the sunlight will still pass through it which will still make the sky look bright like normal, just slightly dimmer if you observe closely. Just blocking 1% of sunlight away is enough for global average temperature to drop by 1°C
So nuclear war could potentially solve Global Warming... by reversing the problem
Wiping out millions of people is not a good thing, especially when the point of protecting the environment is to preserve the only planet we have to live on and thus keep ourselves from going extinct.
Global Warming could also lead to an ice-age. It actually speeds up global.
At least, that's how I understand it. I'm just a lay person who tries to stay informed.
pretty sure nukes have a large carbon footprint, both before _and_ after detonation
@@stocktonjoans yeah but bombing citys reduces their carbon footprint
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost
class 10th NCERT English book beehive
Fire and Ice poem?
The amount of black carbon assumed in the study calculated assumed 100 Tg of black carbon from nuclear weapons. By contrast, the record-breaking wildfires in Australia a couple of years ago released 0.2 Tg of soot into the atmosphere. The fires need to be at least 500 times as widespread as those in Australia in other words. Historically would make it comparible to the eruption of Mt.Tambora, which seriously reduced global temperatures for about a year. It also assumed all the soot would be lifted into the stratosphere, but the most powerful nuclear weapons in the world today (Chinese 5 Mt ones) are not powerful enough to do that to any great scale and they're being retired for smaller warheads. The study also assumed USA and Russia have about 10,000 weapons each, real numbers are half that.
Needless to say I'm somewhat skeptical of the study. It tells us what would happen, if we detonated thousands of Tzar bombas worldwide maybe. But since those have all been retired it tells us preciously little about the dangers of nuclear war.
Hey, let me just start by saying I deeply trust and respect Minute Earth and its creators!
I'm a bit confused by some of the conclusions in this video. There is a video by Neil Halloran that deeply explores the science used to determine the impacts of a nuclear war - specifically the concern about a nuclear winter. His conclusion is that there is little evidence to suggest that a nuclear winter would occur as a result of many (perhaps all existing) nuclear warheads being detonated. I've linked his video here, I'm curious how this interacts with the conclusions from this video?czcams.com/video/KzpIsjgapAk/video.html
DISCLAIMER: This not intended to be a pro-nuclear-war message! Nuclear war has incredibly negative impacts outside of the nuclear-winter result.
3:40 okay what about all those other people. I’m skeptical that 1/3 of the people on earth would just remain fine after all the nukes on earth would be used
This is a type of war where no one can win.
The only winning move is not to play
How about a nice game of chess?
I know some deep sea tube worms that are quite excited about human civilization destroying itself(again).
Depends on the definition of war and winning.
If your win condition is simply destroying all enemies, you will win given enough success.
@@kingol4801
by committing national suicide?
Yeah sure
But for what cost
Problem is that someone can think otherwise
Love the Simon and Marceline reference at the start of the video
_"y not nuke nuke winter?" - Albert Einstein_
The most famous Einstein quote
Awwww, Simon and Marcie
I was always worried that we Canadians would never be able to survive an ice age up in our Northern latitudes but we weren't included in the asterisk. Guess we're already acclimated enough from years of going to fetch the mail in our shorts and flannel coats.
Canada go to -120°c in winter
inuuk are built different, I saw a video of a dude field dressing a duck without any gloves on so he could get all up in there and he didn't seem to be hurting
You just get to starve.
@@carkawalakhatulistiwaCorrect
Nope u cant
Urban people can never survive the wild we are used too comfort.
Only those who grow in a farm do.
The temperature will drop if a nuclear war happens
Me: ah, we need lower temperatures. Global warming!
Try making a video about renewable energies and think of them like in the warm-blooded vs cold blooded video.
Technically every energy is renewable, but some take way too long for practical use.
The "most renewable" energy is solar, while the "least renewable" is nuclear.
3 metrics. Average kilowattage per hour you get per year, natural storage [wind stores it in the atmosphere], and natural depletion. [wind again, losing energy to friction with the surface]
Nuclear isn't renewable, but it is sustainable.
Coal isn't renewable either :P
@@guystreamsstuff7841 Coal renews over geological time spans, but uranium and thorium on earth don't.
@@Astrofrank no, it isn't. For coal to appear, a lot of planetary factors need to come together. Those factors have only arisen during the carboniferous and permian periods, where 90% of coal comes from.
@@guystreamsstuff7841 Most lignite deposits are far younger (Paleogene, Miocene), and if we don't remove them, at least some of them might turn into black coal.
It never about winning it's about "if i can't have it then you can't too"
Beta mindset ngl
0:30 If they nuke Madrid just like in the video my house is safe, yay :3
The issue is if the fine dust particles reach the stratosphere above the cloud layer and can't be cleared by precipitation. This is what causes a nuclear winter.
We all gotta work hard to prevent these things
Yeah.
Nope, I'm not.
Done 👍
Can you explain how?
@@MoonGlow22 Any human intelligent enough to possess nukes should know that it is not advantageous to their longterm survival(evident by this video and many others) to use nukes or instigate a nuclear war. This argument breaks down if the human in possesion of nuclear weapons is mentally unstable, has lost the will to self preserve, or is about to die anyway and has nothing to lose. What we can do is not allow human leaders to joke around with nuclear threats, or even make serious threats. There are more extreme solutions I can think for dictators or any uncooperating human, but this is as much as I can say with my limited knowledge.
This video is a WILD take on fighting climate change.
Just 15-20 nukes in populated cities should about do it. :-o
Better round up to 30. Just to be sure.
Really important information. Thank you. Wrong music choice though.
It's simple. By definition, a war is a lose-lose situation. Therefore, there _are no winners._
*World:* We have a climate crisis
*Putin:* (heavy russian accent) Ladies and Gentlemen, may I interest you in a very efficient solution...
I don't care if this is about how the world can end I'm just happy that there is an adventure time reference here
Yeah, I don't buy it.
The new study simply takes it for granted that firestorms would occur and large amounts of soot would be deposited in the upper atmosphere long term, writing:
"In a nuclear war, bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet"
And to back up this claim they cite the same old papers from the early 80's that have since been roundly criticized for making far-out worst case assumptions. There's nothing new in this "new" paper to support the claim that so much soot would actually be injected into the atmosphere. It's easy to predict a catastrophe, if you just decide to work from the assumption of 150 Tg of soot injected into the atmosphere.
The only people who care what you buy random internet stranger are ultra wealthy ghouls. The same ghouls who poached scientists working on disproving the link between second hand tobacco smoke and cancer. To use those same scientists to claim that nuclear winter totally isn't a thing to care about.
@@Praisethesunson Ah, yes. The famous pro-nuclear war lobby.
Even though the evidence to support the theory of nuclear winter specifically is very shaky, it doesn't mean that there's any doubt that nuclear war would still be the greatest disaster in recorded history. There's absolutely no need to embellish that fact, and scientific messaging should never overstate what the science actually supports, even if it's for the most well--intentioned cause.
It almost worries me that your comment basically implies that if nuclear winter isn't a thing, nuclear war would be no big deal.
No. Nuclear war is terrible. That much is settled. The nuclear winter theory shouldn't be shielded from scientific scrutiny as if it were some sacred necessary lie that holds human civilization together.
@@TheMagicRat933 The pro nuclear war lobby exists and they are called the military industrial complex. They don't talk to you because you don't need to be convinced of anything other than "supporting da troops".
If you don't think they have weaponized science, then your naivety is hilarious.
@@Praisethesunson So you're saying that LockMart and Raytheon shareholders are hoping for nuclear war because they think it will be good for their portfolios?
May I submit for your consideration that maybe the problems facing our world are just *slightly* more nuanced than "a few irrationally greedy cartoon villains are to blame"?
But all of this is really deflecting from my main point anyway.
Nuclear war = bad
Nuclear winter hypothesis = bad science
These two statements do not contradict each other!
Your whole argument so far has been a bulverism. No "Here's why your stance is actually wrong". Only "Here's why your stance - which I will just assume to be wrong - is actually caused by you falling prey to propaganda."
@@Praisethesunson Honestly, this comment expresses a worrying undercurrent of anti-intellectualism. You're basically saying "We can't trust scientists! If they disagree with me, it's because they've been paid off!".
It's no different from the climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers.
I like the adventure time reference there
Perfect, now we can fix global warming ☺️ 2:09
loved the commentary that people were looking into this type of proccess to help reduce global temperatures, but nuking cities is NOT the answer :)
This is the infamous 'nuclear winter' that they used to talk about.
How so? Like was this the bleak scenario that was discussed during the times when nuclear Armageddon was fantasized a lot? Cause if so this was definitely before my time
And has since been debunked
@@akka8588 yes.
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no No it hasn't. The people who you think "debunked it" were working on claiming there is no link between second hand tobacco smoke and cancer before they fooled you about the impact of nuclear weapons.
And theres people who say "global warming" is the problem.
16C; so the vast majority of the world would just become permafrost. As summer for most of the world would just become winter, and winter would become ultra winter. 99% die-off might be steep, as hydroponics do exist, so maybe more like 95%.
It's 99%. The only people who live are literal fisher folk(who don't depend on agriculture) and the poor sods who live off mollusc until plants can grow again.
@Praisethesunson Yeah. I mean where I live even a 4C temperature difference would turn us into a place that rains 9 months of the year, into a place that is probably a permafrost. So it is hard to imagine 16C. But my only point is that today we do have enough alternative crop methods to help people survive pretty much anything that I doubt the die off will actually be 99%. Maybe the crop reduction will be 99%, but I doubt the population.
Like where I live, I don't think we'll go from close to 4 million to less than 40,000. But I could see us getting to 200,000. But I also imagine most people would just migrate as well.
0:52 It's one of the largest volcanoes in the Philippines and it caused a lot destruction.
Read this comment from some other nuclear war video:
We can’t support 8 billions of people during nuke winter.
What if you do have 8 billion people?
That’s simple, in the next year you don’t.
Just a small correction: At 0:15 the numbers 380 and 180 meters seems to be wrong, thats more like a short walking distance. I think maybe they were supposed to be 3800 (3.8 km) and 1800 (1.8 km) meters, thats more like it considering the map beside it, that reflects the size of many house squares.
Great video!
- Explanation in the replies -
I think it checks out, 380m is a proximate for a fireball of a 100kt bomb, its not the heat wave or a shock wave radius, not sure if map is to scale with that
Hi there! Illustrator here. The distances and scale are all correct and to scale (I programmed this animation to be perfectly to scale, in fact!). The map at 0:15 is based on Madrid, Spain, where city blocks (especially near the town center) are relatively small compared to other cities in other parts of the world. Still, 380 meters of radius (aka 760 m of diameter) is HUGE for _just_ fireball!
Not all nukes are that big. They seem to have selected the W-76 in nukemap, it is said to be common in the US and UK arsenal.
@@ArcadiGarciaRius Ok!, thanks for the answer.
I love that the music is so happy.
0:00 isn't this guy Simon Petrikov?
Looks like it!
What a great reference
I have just GENIOUS idea. What if we take 2 of our problems and face them to each other so they negate each other? We have rising temperatures and we have a possible cold war. You do a little nuclear explosions and there you go, you just reduced the global temperature to optimal levels.
I think I deserve a Noble prize or something.
As Randall Monroe puts it: "I'm dying of hypothermia in this blizzard, but a fever should fix that! Good thing I didn't get my flu shot!"
@@Sarsenwood brilliant minds think in similar ways...
@@tsarbomb_chan2537 And fools seldom differ
If you were the person in control of all of the us nuclear missiles and you detected a nuclear strike from russia or china (you know this with 100% accuracy) would you launch a counterstrike causing mutual destruction?
The US politicians definitely will. I mean they're the only ones that HAVE done it.
No
Yes.
Concrete doesn't burn.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built mostly of wood.
The research of the "nuclear winter" phenomena is quite limited, and even doubted by some people.
I have a question. We know that a lot of the nuclear explosion's fireball gets lost ascending in the atmosphere. Is there a way to spread this fireball more efficiently on the earth surface? Like a force field or a counter nuclear explosion flattening the fireball on a much larger surface?
When the shockwave of a nuclear bomb reflects against the ground you can see the effect a shockwave has on the fireball. It deforms a bit but not much.
If you detonated another nuclear bomb above another one it would probably just make it rise faster since the column of air is heated even more.
Why would you want to spread it more effectively :[
Lad is minmaxing fucking nukes
Love the adventure time reference in the beginning.
Hasn't this been debunked?
Something about nukes not causing that bad fires cause the shockwave or something
The shockwave could start extra fires in modern cities, because the resulting destruction leads to a lot of broken gas pipes etc.
@@kedrednael
Like any other bomb
@@kedrednael It is well regarded that fires like the 1906 San Francisco fire would not occur in modern concrete jungles. So the assumption that a nuclear weapon would be able to produce such firestorms in modern cities is unfounded.
@@rzu1474 Yes, though it is hard to drop millions of tons of bombs on a city. That power is contained in one nuclear bomb.
The US sometimes did nuclear bomb effect research by just detonating a huge pile of TNT.
@@kedrednael
The US Did that a lot during WW2 Korea and Vietnam
the tsar bomb should not be used as your scale for a nuclear attack btw
2:00 Global Warming resolved!!
Sooner or later,oil companies will propose this as a solution to Global Warming
I _hate_ it when the Earth warms up by 2 degrees.
I _hate_ it when the Earth cools down by 2 degrees.
0:00 wait... is that adventure time simon and marcy?? if it is I love you guys so much
I thought this video was going to be about fallout. Actually, I feel like you didn't mention fallout at all, is it included in radiation deaths?
I mean. The vast VAST majority of people who die from total nuclear war will starve to death.
So yes, people will die of fallout. But they will the lucky ones.
@@Praisethesunson Not really - death caused by radiation can be very "unpleasant" as well.
I'm pretty sure factoring in the heat from the nuck in the global temperature average after a nuke is detonated would seem to increase the average by a lot
I thought most people knew about the concept of nuclear winter. Is that not the case? Is this something I think is common knowledge because I grew up in a country with nuclear weapons? I am curious what percentage of people have learned about nuclear winter for the first time from this video.
In my experience many people ignore the topic of nuclear war because it is too scary to think about. That is why they are ill-informed about the consequences. There is also the misunderstanding that nuclear winter is "just a theory" (so wrong in many ways). And there is the misunderstanding that nuclear winter was only predicted in the past but it is totally wrong and wouldn't happen.
@@kedrednael Hey man. The military industrial complex pays very good money to sow doubt about nuclear winter. Evil scientists don't work on the cheap. Just ask the tobacco industry. Both industries use the exact same scientists.
Nuclear winter is pretty common knowledge. That said, it is based on outdated models with sketchy numbers, and wild assumptions. And because it was a strong part of MAD, no one dares challenge it, or make well researched updated model due to fears it may lead to changes in nuclear policy
That's one hell of a way to end global warming
It'll be a blast
did anyone else watch the neil halloran video on nuclear winter? it seems like the risk is overstated ? but then i also trust minute earth so m just confused.. which one is correct????
I haven't, but the debate is pretty old. A couple of things about Nuclear Winter:
*The basic mechanism is pretty easy to explain, and the video did a good job of that.
*The concept is what catapulted Carl Sagan to fame. That initial paper has big errors in it, but given the rest of what I'm going to say, that's forgivable, as long as you're reasonable about being corrected.
*Climate is really hard to predict, especially if you want exact numbers. It like its related to the weather or something. General trends are quite doable, all the little details, side effects, time tables, and so on, are hard.
*Nuclear winter has some extra aspects, which we haven't really seen much in nature, so when running models and simulations its really hard to know how far off you are
*The Topic has a political angle, because its related to how hard politicians are allowed to rattle the nuclear sabre. Thus some people aren't clear headed about the subject, and choose interpretations and models for political reasons. Given that the sponsor of this episode is an organization dedicated to promoting peace, there is probably a little bias towards "more deadly" in this video... but good luck finding someone who cares about this topic but is not either ill-informed or unbiased about it.
I hope that helps.
@@derrickthewhite1 that does help!! I was thinking the same... tbh i would like people to believe nuclear winter is real so they dont use nukes lol... idc whats real
@@mihirjain6462 Fun fact. The scientists who work on denying nuclear winter don't care about what's real either. As long as the check they get is big enough they will publish whatever "science" they are told to. Which would explain why the last major papers published by nuclear winter denying scientists include such hits as. Denying the link between second hand tobacco smoke and cancer. Also denying the link between fossil fuel usage and climate change. These scientists are clearly top notch. Considering the diverse fields of study they are able to publish papers about. The massive corporate conglomerates funding them must really be getting their money's worth.
Yes. He did a bad job and is utterly blind to power. Citing Rand public info on nuclear weapons impacts is like citing McDonalds public on the health impacts of sugar and meat.
@@Praisethesunson oh u reckon he did a bad job? I mean I gotta say his work is generally thought out very well and he does list his sources which generallt check out... i reckon imma go down a rabbit hole and check his resources
~1180 feet (Little Boy) versus 5.7 MILES (Tsar Bomba)
FINALLY A SOLID SOLUTION FOR GLOBAL WARMING 😂😂😂