The Day After (Alternate History)

[RalofTyr]

There's a movie that was made in '84 about a full scale nuclear attack by the Soviet Union against America. It's really about the civilians in Kansas and how they dealt with it.

Say that really happened and in 1984, the nukes flew.

Now, some questions.

What areas of the US would be mostly effected by a nuclear war? From what I've studied, civilian cities, unlike Hiroshima and Nagasake, were not the primary targets of a Soviet Nuclear attacks. They were third level targets and would only targeted because there was a high value military target located near them.

What would the survivors(American) be like and how their society would be? It's doubtful a nuclear attack would kill everyone in the US. There would be survivors in areas missed or shielded from radiation. Would the US government exist or would American society be reduced to isolated villages?

How would a nuclear war effect immigration? Would immigration from the south, i.e. Mexico, just stop? Or would they be millions of Central and South Americans, who would be largely unaffected by a nuclear exchange between NATO and the Soviet Union, settle what's left of the United States?

What would life be like in America in 2009 if that happened? Would the radiation levels have gone down enough we can visit a few of those sites that were hit?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

 

[Winner]

There's a movie that was made in '84 about a full scale nuclear attack by the Soviet Union against America. It's really about the civilians in Kansas and how they dealt with it.

Say that really happened and in 1984, the nukes flew.

Now, some questions.

What areas of the US would be mostly effected by a nuclear war? From what I've studied, civilian cities, unlike Hiroshima and Nagasake, were not the primary targets of a Soviet Nuclear attacks. They were third level targets and would only targeted because there was a high value military target located near them.

Exactly. Soviet strategy was similar to the American one - counter-force strike. Many cities would be hit because of important targets they contained though (ports, military bases, government infrastructure etc. etc.).

See the map above.

What would the survivors(American) be like and how their society would be? It's doubtful a nuclear attack would kill everyone in the US. There would be survivors in areas missed or shielded from radiation. Would the US government exist or would American society be reduced to isolated villages?

Since America did not have any real system of civil defense (unlike the USSR), the death toll would be huge, perhaps as high as 1/3 or 1/2 of the population in the first few weeks. More people would die in the following months. The government would be paralyzed which would lead to widespread chaos and possibly fragmentation of the US.

If you're interested in a plausible and detailed hypothetical scenario, read this:

The Effects of a Global Thermonuclear War - 4th edition: escalation in 1988

Few quotes:

(...)
The U.S. government is essentially gone, as well as most state governments; only two state capital cities survive (the missiles targeted on them malfunctioned). The Rio Grande Valley is receiving refugees from Mexico--survivors of devastated areas seeking help.
(...)
Surviving Americans now number 45,000,000, including 4,000,000 Texans. A few million surviving Americans are permanently sterile due to radiation exposure. World population is now 3,300,000,000.
(...)

How would a nuclear war effect immigration? Would immigration from the south, i.e. Mexico, just stop? Or would they be millions of Central and South Americans, who would be largely unaffected by a nuclear exchange between NATO and the Soviet Union, settle what's left of the United States?

Would you try to colonize a country which has just been nuked? I wouldn't.

I imagine that in the long term, people would want to resettle the emptied lands, but in the short term, Mexico would be flooded with US refugees fleeing from famine, disease, chaos and poverty.

What would life be like in America in 2009 if that happened? Would the radiation levels have gone down enough we can visit a few of those sites that were hit?

A common misconception is that fallout from nuclear weapons renders the land uninhabitable for decades. This is not true (barring some exceptional cases). Most of the dangerous fallout would dissipate and decay and become harmless in few weeks, months at maximum (except the epicenters, there it could take years). The greatest radiation risk would come from destroyed nuclear power plants.

 

[civ_king]

NorCal specifically the Bay Area would be obliterated, lets run through why
2 nuclear laboratories
major shipping ports
2 shipyards (Navy of course)
San Fransisco

Rest of Cal:
Major food production
Lots of population
blah blah blah ad infinium

 

[attackfighter]

watch red dawn and youll learn all u need 2 kno

 

[Winner]

Yes - that US Cold War movies are mostly pathetic.

 

[Chieftess]

I wonder what's up there in Montana and North Dakota worth nuking to smithereens (other nuke targets look small). I would also think that the northeast would be a bit worse than the mid-west/northern plains.

Anyway, I think that both the US and USSR rould virtually cease to exist overnight, and since both economic centers of the planet are gone, then the world would head into economic collapse for the next few decades or centuries. North America, Europe and Asia (China, Japan, rest of the USSR, even proxy targets in the middle east. India and most of SE Asia migh be spared) would be pretty messed up, (maybe Australia, too). South America would do ok. The resultant nuclear winter would cause crop failures for a few years, and probably hurt Africa more in the short term, which was going through severe drought in the 80s, IIRC.

 

[Winner]

I wonder what's up there in Montana and North Dakota worth nuking to smithereens (other nuke targets look small). I would also think that the northeast would be a bit worse than the mid-west/northern plains.

Nuclear silos and major AF bases.

 

[RalofTyr]

Hmm, looks like Oregon will rule the US if that happened.

The link stated that Mormons in Utah would probably survive. Does that mean in Mormonism can become the dominate religion in North America? It might have to compete with Catholism coming from the South as Mexicans recolonize the US, as stated in the timeline.

California is a fertile place, but with the destruction of the aqueducts or even the loss of a single dam on the Colorado river would be enough to stop the water from flowing and the Central Valley would dry up, despite the lack of fallout and nuclear targets located their.

Anyone in the Pacific North West and the Central desert region has a good chance of surviving, fallout and nukes, but not necessarily from famine and other causes.

I also liked how Soviet Nukes were dirtier than Americans, has if the Americans were trying to build environmentally friendly weapons.

 

[Junuxx]

Would the US government exist or would American society be reduced to isolated villages?

I'd assume most of the infrastructure is down for years to decades . No telephone or satellite communications between east and west coast, no internet. Also, no oil prodoction and no income to import oil either means little road or air traffic. All major institutions and massive amounts of knowledge will be lost. I think all that makes it rather unlikely that the federal government will hold.

If, like a poster above assumed, Oregon would get away relatively unscathed, would they really want to take in and care for millions of refugees without food and shelter? I'd expect serious tensions.

Nuclear war is really, really nasty.

 

[Chieftess]

I'd assume most of the infrastructure is down for years to decades . No telephone or satellite communications between east and west coast, no internet. Also, no oil prodoction and no income to import oil either means little road or air traffic. All major institutions and massive amounts of knowledge will be lost. I think all that makes it rather unlikely that the federal government will hold.

If, like a poster above assumed, Oregon would get away relatively unscathed, would they really want to take in and care for millions of refugees without food and shelter? I'd expect serious tensions.

Nuclear war is really, really nasty.

If the Internet still works in Oregon, then they'd still have technology information stored. Of course, the Internet does no bit of good when there's no electricity... I think that's a slight, minor detail the designers of ARPAnet overlooked. Now, I don't think technology would be "lost forever", since it usually goes to somewhere else. In the case of the classical "Dark Ages", the Arabs and Chinese continued the technology path (China had gunpoweder really early on). When the Middle East ran out of tin around 1250BC, technology moved to Europe with iron weapons and tools.

The only problem is, this would be global, and you can bet that even oil refineries would probably be nuked or torched with the remaining nukes. That would be enough to plunge the entire planet back into a 4th world country (weak government, fuedal-like kingdoms in a state of constant civilwar over resources like the Dark Ages/Middle Ages), or maybe even "5th world" (think fall of Rome with barbarian hordes, only with modern roving militias). Yes, there are some sites that classify a "5th world country" as a "country" who has negative growth, and negative growth potential (thus, a 'country' without a legitimate government and constant fighting between militias. Somalia would be pretty close to this.).

 

[Junuxx]

Now, I don't think technology would be "lost forever", since it usually goes to somewhere else. In the case of the classical "Dark Ages", the Arabs and Chinese continued the technology path (China had gunpoweder really early on). When the Middle East ran out of tin around 1250BC, technology moved to Europe with iron weapons and tools.

Agreed. By loss of knowledge I didn't mean forgetting whole technologies, the way techs work in Civ. Only one good, large, printed encyclopedia has to survive to allow to reconstruct most of our technology.

Rather I meant loss of databases, corporate and governmental. Who is who, who owns what, what is where? If you'd destroy a completely evacuated New York and Washington, just the buildings, you'd still have massive consequences besides the direct economic damage. You can't govern anything effectively without records. That's what I was trying to say.

 

[RedRalph]

Tech itself would be lost in time. there would be no school system for many, many years, and almost everyone would spend almost all of their time trying to produce food. not a recepie for preserving technology.

 

[Winner]

Tech itself would be lost in time. there would be no school system for many, many years, and almost everyone would spend almost all of their time trying to produce food. not a recepie for preserving technology.

Exactly. I was surprised to learn from reading Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" that when a culture becomes too isolated and small, it quickly loses technology. For example, the natives in Australia and Tasmania lost many stone age inventions, including bow/archery and some other tools.

Modern culture and technology is extremely interconnected and complicated. If it collapsed, many and many things would be lost. Like... computers and all stuff that depend on them, which is now practically everything.

 

[Junuxx]

Nah, you'd need to exterminate every city on the world, big or small, to accomplish something like that. And I don't think that would be an objective or a realistic outcome of WW 3. Some countries get just a few bombs or not get nuked at all. Sure they'll be plunged into chaos when the world market dissappears, but they could become relative islands of stability from which civilization can slowly regrow. Bolivia, Mongolia, Tanzania, Botswana? Who'd bomb that?

The interconnectedness is precisely what makes definite loss of technology so unlikely in this age. It happened in the past to isolated collapsed civs, yes. The Mycenaen Greeks even forgot writing after the Hyksos caused the collapse of their civilization. But with current global literacy levels that's nearly impossible without entire extinction of the human race.

 

[RalofTyr]

The Americas has always been isolated from the rest of the world.

 

[Winner]

Nah, you'd need to exterminate every city on the world, big or small, to accomplish something like that. And I don't think that would be an objective or a realistic outcome of WW 3. Some countries get just a few bombs or not get nuked at all. Sure they'll be plunged into chaos when the world market dissappears, but they could become relative islands of stability from which civilization can slowly regrow. Bolivia, Mongolia, Tanzania, Botswana? Who'd bomb that?

The interconnectedness is precisely what makes definite loss of technology so unlikely in this age. It happened in the past to isolated collapsed civs, yes. The Mycenaen Greeks even forgot writing after the Hyksos caused the collapse of their civilization. But with current global literacy levels that's nearly impossible without entire extinction of the human race.

I am of course talking about some sort of global disaster which would crush all industrialized nations. I am pretty sure that if they suffered some kind fo collapse today, the fact that some African and Latin American countries survived without much damage would be pretty irrelevant.

 

[Winner]

BTW check out this nuke simulator. Don't take it totally seriously (the method used for calculating fallout patterns is totally wrong), but it gives you some idea what your chances would be if your town got nuked

 

[Serutan]

This looks like a post 1991 map - no plume for Omaha, NE (former Strategic Air Command headquarters).

@Winner - If you're in the town that's being nuked, methinks fallout will be the least of your problems.

 

[Winner]

This looks like a post 1991 map - no plume for Omaha, NE (former Strategic Air Command headquarters).

Only if the Russians have updated their war plans

@Winner - If you're in the town that's being nuked, methinks fallout will be the least of your problems.

Not where I live. If Brno was hit by any standardly big nuke currently included in Russian arsenal (roughly 500 Kt range), I'd most definitely survive since I live at the outskirts and hills between my apartment and the city center would shield me from the worst effects of the shock wave, which would be weak anyway here. Then I'd have roughly 1/4 - 1 hour (depending on the wind) to get underground in order to avoid lethal exposure from the fallout.

The bad thing is that I don't really have a shelter ready in a reasonable radius from my apartment and the house doesn't have a solid basement.