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Yes, India And Pakistan Could End The World As We Know It Through A Nuclear Exchange

(Copied)
Nuclear Winter - Science Made to Compel Politicians for Disarmament


The average warhead size in the USA arsenal is 330 KT. The Russian average is higher, but not enough to change this outcome. To cause a nuclear winter the debris clouds and smoke have to be elevated above the troposphere into the high stratosphere. Any debris or smoke that is released into the troposphere (below 70,000 feet) quickly rains out in the weather within a few days to a week or so max.

Nuclear weapons yields do not affect the environment on a linear scale , that is to say that a 1 megaton bomb, even though it is 10 x more energy than 100 KT bomb, doesn't mean it produces 10 x more destruction. Thermal radiation decays as the inverse square while blast decays as the inverse cube of distance from the detonation point. Much of that extra heat and energy goes straight up and drops off quickly as distance is increased from the point of detonation. With smaller yields the energy is not enough to breach the stratosphere, and for bombs that are not multi-megaton the earth has its own protection mechanism for particles released in the troposphere called the weather, and it is extremely efficient.

The only way to get particles to stay aloft longer is to blast them considerably higher than 70,000 feet. The reason this will not happen today is that the US and Russia have eliminated megaton size weapons from the high alert strategic forces (ICBM’s & SLBM’s). The small quantities left of the B-83 variable yield ≈ 20 KT - 1.2 MT gravity bomb are slated for retirement in 2025.

To get anything above 70,000 feet you need yields substantially above 1 megaton. The bombs deployed today will throw debris up 50,000 - 60,000 feet into the atmosphere and all of that will rain back down to the earth in hours and days later near the point of detonation.

main-qimg-9d33aaf1676f05d06cd1e88e26575667

Firestorms and other bad science that led to the wrong conclusions.

A lot of new knowledge on pyrocumulonimbus cloud formation and soot into the lower stratosphere is still being interpreted. Until the early 2000’s it was thought the boundary layer between the troposphere and stratosphere presented a greater barrier for smoke, however, smoke columns rising into the lower stratosphere have been observed. This indicates that there is a long term lasting effect, but to what extent is still unanswered.

A 2010 study by the American Meteorological Society is the first modern attempt to quantify these effects. In their report, they tracked the effects of 17 stratospheric smoke plumes in 2002. What they found is that the average time the smoke plumes presence in the stratosphere was detectable, was only about 2 months. The report indicates that particles of carbon soot start to clump together at some point after interacting with sunlight and then drop out of the stratosphere quickly. This happens in weeks not in years, a major contradiction to the premise of nuclear winter theories. What is not known is there a tipping point of equilibrium that would keep the soot aloft if there was enough of it. So like many things, there is a certain element of the unknown in this.

What is known is that the TTAPS study made famous by Carl Sagan and his team, used exaggerated volumes of soot and smoke in their model. Their assumptions for a nuclear winter were significantly off in their calculations and in 1990 the original team largely retracted their study as being invalid. Key government studies since then have shown that the available combustible materials used in the models in TTAPS were significantly overstated and this has flawed all the studies since that have used the TTAPS study as the basis of their work.

The nuclear winter theory relies heavily on the worst case scenario of many of the events that would unfold during a nuclear exchange and as such exaggerates the effect dramatically. A contemporary example of prediction not accurately modeling reality is the forecast effects of the Iraqis setting 600 oil rigs ablaze in 1991.

main-qimg-f04d15c1f80ca20252be00ff0f9056a7.webp

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and Iraqi threats of igniting the country's 800 or so oil wells were made, speculation on the cumulative climatic effect of this, presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva that November in 1990, ranged from a nuclear winter type scenario, to heavy acid rain and even short term immediate global warming.

As threatened, the wells were set ablaze by the retreating Iraqis in March of 1991 and the 600 or so successfully set Kuwaiti oil wells were not fully extinguished until November 6, 1991, eight months after the end of the war During this time they consumed an estimated six million barrels of oil daily at their peak intensity.

main-qimg-8f2c142967400a430861efdee0730302.webp

In articles printed in the Wilmington morning star and the Baltimore Sun newspapers of January 1991, prominent authors of nuclear winter papers — Richard P. Turco, John W. Birks, Carl Sagan, Alan Robock and Paul Crutzen —together collectively stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of "sub-freezing" temperatures as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months.

Carl Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared.”

The problems with the models that started the nuclear winter debate, the models used by Sagan and other teams of scientists at that time, is obvious when you look at the detail. The analysis was done at extremely low resolution and with no feedback loops. It was a 2D model, not a 3D model, so the volume and altitude of particles, heat flux, fuel loading were never actually calculated. The numbers were made uniform and plugged in as a single result for the entire world. So the heat flux, fuel loading, soot, smoke and debris was uniform no mater if the city was Fargo North Dakota or Los Angeles. It was inherently wrong and fatally flawed.

The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires' modest impact suggested that "some numbers (used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis)... were probably a little overblown.”

In a paper by the United States Department of Homeland Security finalized in 2010, fire experts stated that due to the nature of modern city design and construction, with the US serving as an example, a firestorm is unlikely after a nuclear detonation in a modern city. This is not to say that fires will not occur over a large area after a detonation, but that the fires would not coalesce and form the all-important stratosphere punching firestorm plume that the nuclear winter papers require as a prerequisite assumption in their climate computer models. Additional recent studies on smoke columns indicate that nearly every possible fire scenario results in little to no stratospheric injection of smoke..

The nuclear bombing of Nagasaki for example, did not produce a firestorm. This was similarly noted as early as 1986-88, when the assumed quantity of fuel "mass loading" (the amount of fuel per square meter) in cities underpinning the winter models was found to be too high and intentionally creates heat fluxes that lofts smoke into the lower stratosphere, yet assessments "more characteristic of conditions" to be found in real-world modern cities, had found that the fuel loading, and hence the heat flux the results from burning, would rarely loft smoke much higher than 4 km.

The scenarios contributing to a firestorm are also dependent on the size of bombs being used. Only bombs in the +1 megaton range and higher would ignite a sufficiently large area for firestorms to coalesce crossing over from sparsely located high fuel-load areas into these lower fuel-loaded areas in a mixed city model, such as Nashville.

main-qimg-e63aee7007dfd05c982da6042d41c679.webp

main-qimg-77feeb888e51031fb77d7c523699f5a7.webp

Despite the initial searing heat and the explosive overpressure, this typical American wood frame house did not burn with a flash heat exposure 25 watts per square centimeter. The fuel loading and construction material of modern American cities, has only 20% of the necessary fuel to start a firestorm. Most fires in Hiroshima can be traced to overturned charcoal cookers used extensively at the time in residential cooking.Compounded by closely pack dwellings on narrow streets that were heavily ladened with flammable materials.

Continued from above

Russell Seitz, Associate of the Harvard University Center for International Affairs, argues that the winter model's assumptions give results which the researchers want to achieve and is a case of "worst-case analysis run amok". Seitz criticized the theory for being based on successive worst-case events.

Notes from “Disaster Preparedness, An International Perspective:: “If the amount of smoke assumed in the “nuclear winter” report (Science, v222, 1983, pp1283-92) were decreased by a factor of 2.5, the climatic effect would probably be trivial. In considering the actual terrain that surrounds most likely targets, the probable type of explosions (ground bursts against hardened military facilities), the overlapping of targets, and conditions that could reduce the incendiary potential of the thermal pulse, critics of the report believe that the quantity of smoke from non-urban fires has probably been overestimated by at least a factor of ten (Cresson Kearny, Fire Emissions and Some of Their Uncertainties, Presented at the Fourth International Seminar on Nuclear War, Erice, Sicily, August 19-24, 1984). Rathjens and Siegel (Issues in Science and Technology, v1, 1985, pp123-8) believe there would likely be four times less smoke and eight times less soot from cities than estimated in the National Research Council study.”

Putting the fires of a nuclear war in another perspective. Every year on earth, wildfires consume 350,000,000 - 450,000,000 hectares of forests, grasslands and structures and results in an average of 339,000 deaths worldwide. This is equal to 1,700,000 square miles burned every year worldwide, nearly half the size of the entire Unites States. In this document,Allen E Hall's answer to Who would win in a war between Russia and the US?, I laid out a hypothetical scenario where every nuclear bomb in existence, excluding ones listed as retired, are spread out equally at a density of 1 bomb every 100 square miles (10,000 bombs x 100 square miles = 1,000,000 square miles). Under that scenario, the bomb coverage only extends over 1/3 of the land mass of the USA (the USA is 3,800,000 square miles). The world burns more already every year without sending the climate into a nuclear winter. This also is equal to half the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels annually. Wild fires release massive amounts of energy on scale equivalent of nuclear weapons. The Chisholm Fire, a man-caused forest fire in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2001 released the equivalent energy of 1200 Hiroshima atomic detonations. The firestorm after the bombing of Hiroshima released 200 times the energy of the atomic bomb itself.

Taking all that into consideration and taking the available megatonnage in today's arsenals and and adjusting the implied atmospheric load of carbon black soot you might end up with 5 teragrams aloft in the lower stratosphere resulting in a 2–3 °C drop for several months to worst case several years. Not quite a nuclear winter, barely a nuclear fall… and even that is debatable since evidence suggests a much shorter time of smoke suspension in the stratosphere and that the premise on uncontrolled fire storms is unfounded based upon actual observations of the bombs dropped in 1945. While Hiroshima did experience a firestorm Nagasaki did not. Nagasaki was a city with much more combustible material than most modern day cities. The great flaw with the original nuclear winter models is that it assumed the same high loading of fuel for all cities and that firestorms would occur at all those locations. A firestorm is not assured and is considered unlikely in modern cities, and thus the theory is flawed from top to bottom.

An interesting note about several major recent reports to the contrary of my conclusion and even ones going back 10 years as well. None of these reports question the fuel loading and levels of atmospheric smoke generated. They all seem to use the original basis as put forth by Carl Sagan’s team, even though Sagan himself admitted his model did not work. The footnote here will take you to an example of the poor quality models still being pushed as real science. A Rutgers 2010 report that references the work by Sagan and offers no explanation for the mechanism of smoke and soot transport into the stratosphere. Quality work is not guaranteed just because the sources are listed as a professionals in this field. Healthy skepticism is your friend, use it.

So nuclear winter was always a stretch because the science was unfounded and we never had enough high-yield bombs in reality to cause it ever, but for sure in 2017 because we do not have any in the high yield range required within the active strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia or the USA. China has approximately 50 which is not enough to change the outcome and actually is not deemed even a credible threat to the mainland USA.
https://www.quora.com/Is-nuclear-winter-a-myth
 
Whatever it is.....Kashmir isn't going anywhere!....But Kasmiris can.....to save the world.
 
Sub continent contribution to world food needs is well documented. Are there any alternative source of food security if sub continent becomes a radioactive wasteland for next couple of centuries?
 
1-A Country who have a clear problem in a region it is controlling where Locals are clearly upset and revolting and have a clear connection with a nuclear Armed state. And the Country is simply refusing their is anything wrong.
2-A Majority of CH*** population who think in modern age of military technology, thwarting a military like Pakistan is Child Play
3-A country who is so reactive that when some thin happens to its forces in THAT particular volatile area, Decides to bomb a Nuclear Armed State with state of the art Equipped Massive Military force.
4-Will not Accept any arbitration from any outside Country
5-Whose Establishment is Overestimating itself and Under Estimating its enemies at every end even their Army chief keeps giving statements of fighting 2 front war and so on.
6-Whose Government allow no stone un turned to let the tensions defuse with its Nuclear armed neighbour. Doing Constant Drama at every level possible despite being itself official Aggressor Party.From Film Industry, to Artists, ,to Sports. Everyone is hell bent to turn its public more and more redical. Because The Area they are failing to control is killing their soldiers.
With that many issues this country is allowed to have Nukes unchecked and called Rising and shining by the World, then don't complain for such issues. This world deserves a Nuclear Holocaust when Such Reactive Aggressive Third World Country is allowed to have Nukes. If World would have checked on Indian Nuke Program back in 70s Pakistan would never have been a Nuclear Power as well. Now Wait for the inevitable.
The most Dangerous Fool is the one who refuses to accept he is a Fool that is the Indian Government.
Our Government Position is clear as crystal, we have nothing to do with Pulwama and We don't want war. Its India that is itching to work on its stupid plans.
100% correct, but for that you need to place "pakistan" in place of "a country", we dont fear you and also we will stop your jihadi ideology at all costs, sucidal tendency is something that you people take pride in, we will not go down until we fix this mess....
 
India has 2nd strike policy so it won't be the first one to go nuclear. World will blame the country that does the 1st strike.
 
It is predictive modeling.

Read about TSAR bomba event, and how it affected global conditions, but mankind is thriving regardless.

I absolutely believe that a nuclear war would be an extremely destructive event, but a regional nuclear war ruining the world? Nope.
The modeling is based on undeniable facts (see Chernobyl map..just a nuclear leak..).. and more importantly on minimum kt yield (15 kt) nuclear bombs use, and their cumulative effect.. imagine 100 nuclear bombs with 50-250 kt yield each not even talking about thermonuclear, hydrogen bombs of megaton yields..)

"The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 (or 11:33) Moscow Time on 30 October 1961, over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, at a height of 4,200 m ASL (4000 m above the target)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

India has 2nd strike policy so it won't be the first one to go nuclear. World will blame the country that does the 1st strike.
What world? :lol:

Seriously, the world will blame the one who has started and escalated the hostilities while knowing the consequences..
 
The modeling is based on undeniable facts (see Chernobyl map..just a nuclear leak..).. and more importantly on minimum kt yield (15 kt) nuclear bombs use, and their cumulative effect.. imagine 100 nuclear bombs with 50-250 kt yield each not even talking about thermonuclear, hydrogen bombs of megaton yields..)

"The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 (or 11:33) Moscow Time on 30 October 1961, over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, at a height of 4,200 m ASL (4000 m above the target)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
Check the response of member @Reddington

Answers in there.
 
What world? :lol:

Seriously, the world will blame the one who has started and escalated the hostilities while knowing the consequences..

Wrong! The world won't see the nuclear war between Pakistan vs India. It will see it as an Islamic country vs a Secular country. Right now pretty much every major country has been affected by Islamic extremism. If India does escalate things and it reaches nuclear threshold....the world will only see it as a retaliation against Islamic Extremism.
 
Wrong! The world won't see the nuclear war between Pakistan vs India. It will see it as an Islamic country vs a Secular country. Right now pretty much every major country has been affected by Islamic extremism. If India does escalate things and it reaches nuclear threshold....the world will only see it as a retaliation against Islamic Extremism.
The world know about Hindu extremism more than you think..It just wants to Milk India as much as they can for now..that is why you think in your wrong mind that they think you are a secular nation..:lol:
The world is not blind..:
images


Check the response of member @Reddington

Answers in there.
That article is faulty..it says:
"To get anything above 70,000 feet you need yields substantially above 1 megaton. The bombs deployed today will throw debris up 50,000 - 60,000 feet into the atmosphere and all of that will rain back down to the earth in hours and days later near the point of detonation."
It does not take in consideration the Wind factor.. and tries to play down the radioactive rain..
Apparently what seems sound to you is inherently faulty..
 
The world know about Hindu extremism more than you think..It just wants to Milk India as much as they can for now..that is why you think in your wrong mind that they think you are a secular nation..:lol:
The world is not blind..:
images



That article is faulty..it says:
"To get anything above 70,000 feet you need yields substantially above 1 megaton. The bombs deployed today will throw debris up 50,000 - 60,000 feet into the atmosphere and all of that will rain back down to the earth in hours and days later near the point of detonation."
It does not take in consideration the Wind factor.. and tries to play down the radioactive rain..
Apparently what seems sound to you is inherently faulty..

There is no Hindu Extremism. Those gau rakshaks you see get beaten up by our police if there is political will. They can't do jack shit.
 
What do you call Hindus killing Muslims for cow meat.. is that secularism or Hindu extremism?

On topic now please..
There is a potentially huge danger for the world at large in case of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan and there is no much doubt about it..
 
Nuclear Winter is a hoax. It's a propaganda done by the US along with UN to remove nuclear weapons from the world.

(Copied)
Nuclear Winter - Science Made to Compel Politicians for Disarmament


The average warhead size in the USA arsenal is 330 KT. The Russian average is higher, but not enough to change this outcome. To cause a nuclear winter the debris clouds and smoke have to be elevated above the troposphere into the high stratosphere. Any debris or smoke that is released into the troposphere (below 70,000 feet) quickly rains out in the weather within a few days to a week or so max.

Nuclear weapons yields do not affect the environment on a linear scale , that is to say that a 1 megaton bomb, even though it is 10 x more energy than 100 KT bomb, doesn't mean it produces 10 x more destruction. Thermal radiation decays as the inverse square while blast decays as the inverse cube of distance from the detonation point. Much of that extra heat and energy goes straight up and drops off quickly as distance is increased from the point of detonation. With smaller yields the energy is not enough to breach the stratosphere, and for bombs that are not multi-megaton the earth has its own protection mechanism for particles released in the troposphere called the weather, and it is extremely efficient.

The only way to get particles to stay aloft longer is to blast them considerably higher than 70,000 feet. The reason this will not happen today is that the US and Russia have eliminated megaton size weapons from the high alert strategic forces (ICBM’s & SLBM’s). The small quantities left of the B-83 variable yield ≈ 20 KT - 1.2 MT gravity bomb are slated for retirement in 2025.

To get anything above 70,000 feet you need yields substantially above 1 megaton. The bombs deployed today will throw debris up 50,000 - 60,000 feet into the atmosphere and all of that will rain back down to the earth in hours and days later near the point of detonation.

main-qimg-9d33aaf1676f05d06cd1e88e26575667

Firestorms and other bad science that led to the wrong conclusions.

A lot of new knowledge on pyrocumulonimbus cloud formation and soot into the lower stratosphere is still being interpreted. Until the early 2000’s it was thought the boundary layer between the troposphere and stratosphere presented a greater barrier for smoke, however, smoke columns rising into the lower stratosphere have been observed. This indicates that there is a long term lasting effect, but to what extent is still unanswered.

A 2010 study by the American Meteorological Society is the first modern attempt to quantify these effects. In their report, they tracked the effects of 17 stratospheric smoke plumes in 2002. What they found is that the average time the smoke plumes presence in the stratosphere was detectable, was only about 2 months. The report indicates that particles of carbon soot start to clump together at some point after interacting with sunlight and then drop out of the stratosphere quickly. This happens in weeks not in years, a major contradiction to the premise of nuclear winter theories. What is not known is there a tipping point of equilibrium that would keep the soot aloft if there was enough of it. So like many things, there is a certain element of the unknown in this.

What is known is that the TTAPS study made famous by Carl Sagan and his team, used exaggerated volumes of soot and smoke in their model. Their assumptions for a nuclear winter were significantly off in their calculations and in 1990 the original team largely retracted their study as being invalid. Key government studies since then have shown that the available combustible materials used in the models in TTAPS were significantly overstated and this has flawed all the studies since that have used the TTAPS study as the basis of their work.

The nuclear winter theory relies heavily on the worst case scenario of many of the events that would unfold during a nuclear exchange and as such exaggerates the effect dramatically. A contemporary example of prediction not accurately modeling reality is the forecast effects of the Iraqis setting 600 oil rigs ablaze in 1991.

main-qimg-f04d15c1f80ca20252be00ff0f9056a7.webp

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and Iraqi threats of igniting the country's 800 or so oil wells were made, speculation on the cumulative climatic effect of this, presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva that November in 1990, ranged from a nuclear winter type scenario, to heavy acid rain and even short term immediate global warming.

As threatened, the wells were set ablaze by the retreating Iraqis in March of 1991 and the 600 or so successfully set Kuwaiti oil wells were not fully extinguished until November 6, 1991, eight months after the end of the war During this time they consumed an estimated six million barrels of oil daily at their peak intensity.

main-qimg-8f2c142967400a430861efdee0730302.webp

In articles printed in the Wilmington morning star and the Baltimore Sun newspapers of January 1991, prominent authors of nuclear winter papers — Richard P. Turco, John W. Birks, Carl Sagan, Alan Robock and Paul Crutzen —together collectively stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of "sub-freezing" temperatures as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months.

Carl Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared.”

The problems with the models that started the nuclear winter debate, the models used by Sagan and other teams of scientists at that time, is obvious when you look at the detail. The analysis was done at extremely low resolution and with no feedback loops. It was a 2D model, not a 3D model, so the volume and altitude of particles, heat flux, fuel loading were never actually calculated. The numbers were made uniform and plugged in as a single result for the entire world. So the heat flux, fuel loading, soot, smoke and debris was uniform no mater if the city was Fargo North Dakota or Los Angeles. It was inherently wrong and fatally flawed.

The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires' modest impact suggested that "some numbers (used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis)... were probably a little overblown.”

In a paper by the United States Department of Homeland Security finalized in 2010, fire experts stated that due to the nature of modern city design and construction, with the US serving as an example, a firestorm is unlikely after a nuclear detonation in a modern city. This is not to say that fires will not occur over a large area after a detonation, but that the fires would not coalesce and form the all-important stratosphere punching firestorm plume that the nuclear winter papers require as a prerequisite assumption in their climate computer models. Additional recent studies on smoke columns indicate that nearly every possible fire scenario results in little to no stratospheric injection of smoke..

The nuclear bombing of Nagasaki for example, did not produce a firestorm. This was similarly noted as early as 1986-88, when the assumed quantity of fuel "mass loading" (the amount of fuel per square meter) in cities underpinning the winter models was found to be too high and intentionally creates heat fluxes that lofts smoke into the lower stratosphere, yet assessments "more characteristic of conditions" to be found in real-world modern cities, had found that the fuel loading, and hence the heat flux the results from burning, would rarely loft smoke much higher than 4 km.

The scenarios contributing to a firestorm are also dependent on the size of bombs being used. Only bombs in the +1 megaton range and higher would ignite a sufficiently large area for firestorms to coalesce crossing over from sparsely located high fuel-load areas into these lower fuel-loaded areas in a mixed city model, such as Nashville.

main-qimg-e63aee7007dfd05c982da6042d41c679.webp

main-qimg-77feeb888e51031fb77d7c523699f5a7.webp

Despite the initial searing heat and the explosive overpressure, this typical American wood frame house did not burn with a flash heat exposure 25 watts per square centimeter. The fuel loading and construction material of modern American cities, has only 20% of the necessary fuel to start a firestorm. Most fires in Hiroshima can be traced to overturned charcoal cookers used extensively at the time in residential cooking.Compounded by closely pack dwellings on narrow streets that were heavily ladened with flammable materials.

Continued from above

Russell Seitz, Associate of the Harvard University Center for International Affairs, argues that the winter model's assumptions give results which the researchers want to achieve and is a case of "worst-case analysis run amok". Seitz criticized the theory for being based on successive worst-case events.

Notes from “Disaster Preparedness, An International Perspective:: “If the amount of smoke assumed in the “nuclear winter” report (Science, v222, 1983, pp1283-92) were decreased by a factor of 2.5, the climatic effect would probably be trivial. In considering the actual terrain that surrounds most likely targets, the probable type of explosions (ground bursts against hardened military facilities), the overlapping of targets, and conditions that could reduce the incendiary potential of the thermal pulse, critics of the report believe that the quantity of smoke from non-urban fires has probably been overestimated by at least a factor of ten (Cresson Kearny, Fire Emissions and Some of Their Uncertainties, Presented at the Fourth International Seminar on Nuclear War, Erice, Sicily, August 19-24, 1984). Rathjens and Siegel (Issues in Science and Technology, v1, 1985, pp123-8) believe there would likely be four times less smoke and eight times less soot from cities than estimated in the National Research Council study.”

Putting the fires of a nuclear war in another perspective. Every year on earth, wildfires consume 350,000,000 - 450,000,000 hectares of forests, grasslands and structures and results in an average of 339,000 deaths worldwide. This is equal to 1,700,000 square miles burned every year worldwide, nearly half the size of the entire Unites States. In this document,Allen E Hall's answer to Who would win in a war between Russia and the US?, I laid out a hypothetical scenario where every nuclear bomb in existence, excluding ones listed as retired, are spread out equally at a density of 1 bomb every 100 square miles (10,000 bombs x 100 square miles = 1,000,000 square miles). Under that scenario, the bomb coverage only extends over 1/3 of the land mass of the USA (the USA is 3,800,000 square miles). The world burns more already every year without sending the climate into a nuclear winter. This also is equal to half the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels annually. Wild fires release massive amounts of energy on scale equivalent of nuclear weapons. The Chisholm Fire, a man-caused forest fire in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2001 released the equivalent energy of 1200 Hiroshima atomic detonations. The firestorm after the bombing of Hiroshima released 200 times the energy of the atomic bomb itself.

Taking all that into consideration and taking the available megatonnage in today's arsenals and and adjusting the implied atmospheric load of carbon black soot you might end up with 5 teragrams aloft in the lower stratosphere resulting in a 2–3 °C drop for several months to worst case several years. Not quite a nuclear winter, barely a nuclear fall… and even that is debatable since evidence suggests a much shorter time of smoke suspension in the stratosphere and that the premise on uncontrolled fire storms is unfounded based upon actual observations of the bombs dropped in 1945. While Hiroshima did experience a firestorm Nagasaki did not. Nagasaki was a city with much more combustible material than most modern day cities. The great flaw with the original nuclear winter models is that it assumed the same high loading of fuel for all cities and that firestorms would occur at all those locations. A firestorm is not assured and is considered unlikely in modern cities, and thus the theory is flawed from top to bottom.

An interesting note about several major recent reports to the contrary of my conclusion and even ones going back 10 years as well. None of these reports question the fuel loading and levels of atmospheric smoke generated. They all seem to use the original basis as put forth by Carl Sagan’s team, even though Sagan himself admitted his model did not work. The footnote here will take you to an example of the poor quality models still being pushed as real science. A Rutgers 2010 report that references the work by Sagan and offers no explanation for the mechanism of smoke and soot transport into the stratosphere. Quality work is not guaranteed just because the sources are listed as a professionals in this field. Healthy skepticism is your friend, use it.

So nuclear winter was always a stretch because the science was unfounded and we never had enough high-yield bombs in reality to cause it ever, but for sure in 2017 because we do not have any in the high yield range required within the active strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia or the USA. China has approximately 50 which is not enough to change the outcome and actually is not deemed even a credible threat to the mainland USA.
https://www.quora.com/Is-nuclear-winter-a-myth

@Reddington

Thank you for highlighting a relatively sound analysis.

Nuclear winter is a HOAX. There are certain facts that nobody can reject. For someone who couldn't understand these technical details, this propaganda can be destroyed easily with a simple fact.

Pakistan and India have about more or less 150 nukes each. Let's just assume in a nuclear war they use all of them. That would only be 300 nukes. But what most people don't think about is that since 1945 more than 2000 nuclear tests has been done till today. Of those nuclear tests, about 600 atmospheric nuclear tests had been done by USA, USSR,UK,France between 1945 to 1963 (Limited Test Ban Treaty). Those atmospheric nuclear tests had a yield of about 600 Megaton.
So where the hell is nuclear winter??????
 

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