Nukes and the end of the world

[scienceguy8888]

I keep coming up into arguments with my friends that say that an all out nuclear war would be the end of the world a great deal of it coming from the nuclear winter. My position is that the nuclear winter caused from an all out nuclear war would be no worse than super-volcanic eruption. My side of the argument is that a super-volcanic eruption is usually said to be in the order of thousands of nuclear bombs, that the total number of nuclear bombs in the world is less than the order a super volcano and that a volcano puts all its energy to in throwing material into the atmosphere while nukes place their energy in an outward motion placing a fair amount of their energy pushing material sideways and not upwards. Thoughts?
Are any of my points invalid?

 

[Laurens]

I keep coming up into arguments with my friends that say that an all out nuclear war would be the end of the world a great deal of it coming from the nuclear winter. My position is that the nuclear winter caused from an all out nuclear war would be no worse than super-volcanic eruption. My side of the argument is that a super-volcanic eruption is usually said to be in the order of thousands of nuclear bombs, that the total number of nuclear bombs in the world is less than the order a super volcano and that a volcano puts all its energy to in throwing material into the atmosphere while nukes place their energy in an outward motion placing a fair amount of their energy pushing material sideways and not upwards. Thoughts?
Are any of my points invalid?

My thoughts?

I'm pretty sure I don't want to be around to find out which is worse

 

[KittenKoder]

First, there would be no "nuclear winter" .. been debunked.

Secondly, it would not end all life, it would just destroy most of the more complex life forms, like us. It would drastically alter the environment and climate, and leave both of those in turmoil for a very long time, making it almost impossible for us to survive because the bombs would destroy our infrastructure.

However, because of bunkers, it would not even wipe out all human life in the blast zone, a sufficient amount of warning and much of the population would be safe. The reason an "all out nuclear war" would be worse than say, a super volcanic eruption, is the sheer number of spread of the attack. It would be a lot of explosions spread out through all the densely populated cities. The radiation levels would fall in 50 years (I think but do not know how accurate that is) or some such time to safe enough levels to live near, but ... the blast areas would be useless until natural phenomenon mixed it all up again, which could take thousands of years.

So basically, no, it won't destroy the planet, but it would be a very, very, extremely, bad idea to even consider starting a nuclear war.

 

[scienceguy8888]

well not really, nature has proven to be very resilient to radiation, there was whole ecosystems growing in Chenoble only a decade afterwards, though humans not so much...

 

[KittenKoder]

well not really, nature has proven to be very resilient to radiation, there was whole ecosystems growing in Chenoble only a decade afterwards, though humans not so much...

As I said, it would be bad for us most, and life forms like us (domestic and those who have adapted to us). But it would not be the end of the world itself.

 

[GeologyJack]

End of the world, hardly, end of complex life, likely, and if somehow we survive, its going to be an interesting millennium.

 

[Visaki]

Taking into account SLiMEs (subsurface lithotrophic microbial ecosystem), black smoker colonies and the fact that there is life very, very deep in the crust an event that would totally sterilize Earth would be an impact event in almost planetary proportions. Or possibly a nearby Gamma Ray Burst.

Full scale nuclear war and a supervolcano erruption are totally different matters and I can't really compare the two in the way I think OP is suggesting. I will say that I can't really imagine either wiping out humans as a species. We are just too spread out and too adaptive to go extinct to anything less than an event that basicly cooks the planet to crisp. I suppose you could kill humans off if you had all the nukes in the world and actually tried killing everyone in the planet but a nuclear war with the current and expected nuclear powers and number of nukes just won't cut it.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

I do want to draw something of a distinction between nukes and a volcano, because there are significant differences in how they would impact the environment:

For one thing, a nuclear war of any size would spread destruction over a much wider area, and produce more ash and particulate matter for this reason. Also, the effect of radiation on plants would be a significant factor. Dead and dying plants would be less able to secure the soil with their roots, less able to hold moisture, and so on. This could create dust bowl-like conditions and easily be enough to push already at-risk regions into desertification. The good news is that grasses are fairly resistant to radiation, but the point is that its not just the size of the explosion that matters.

That said, as others have pointed out, the world itself would almost certainly be fine.

 

[scienceguy8888]

Well I'm not even sure if it would destroy all of human civilisation, I mean, most of latin america, africa and the middle to far east (so the stas, ect) wouldn't be nuked (why would they?) so all of those places should not suffer mass devastation and be fine, right?
Maybe radioactive dust might be a problem but... that seems to be it...

 

[Inferno]

Much of my answer depends on huge assumptions, so if you can find an error in my assumptions, please point them out and correct them.

The current total stockpile of nuclear weapons is on the order of 24,000 warheads and has been estimated to be as high as 30,000. The fallout of a nuclear weapon is around 1,000 square kilometres for a 50MT warhead, as can be seen from the Russian Tsar Bomba. Most warheads are far smaller than that, so I'll estimate the average to be on the order of 10MT's. Note that this will produce a larger fallout than 1,000/50*10=200km,², but I'll use that simplified measure because I don't know how much it will be. The surface area of all land on earth is about 148,940,000 km,² according to Wikipedia. So with that, let's calculate: 4,800,000 km,² for 24k warheads and 6,000,000 km,² for 30k warheads.
According to estimates that I've read on various pages, humans cover about 18 million square kilometres on earth, the rest being deserts and mountains and places where few people live. So technically, there aren't enough bombs to kill off humanity. (If my assumptions are correct.)

The real problem, and Thunderf00t touches on that in one of his videos, is the EMP or Electro-Magnetic-Pulse. Detonate that in the right places and the power will go out almost everywhere, the blast will destroy infrastructure and the fireball will burn everything that's left. Only a few hundred bombs are needed to severely cripple basically all cities on earth. If Thunderf00t is correct in his video, there'd be few people killed by the initial blast and far more by the aftermath and loss of infrastructure. It's possible that humanity (as it is now) wouldn't recover from this.

 

[Frenger]

Much of my answer depends on huge assumptions, so if you can find an error in my assumptions, please point them out and correct them.

The current total stockpile of nuclear weapons is on the order of 24,000 warheads and has been estimated to be as high as 30,000. The fallout of a nuclear weapon is around 1,000 square kilometres for a 50MT warhead, as can be seen from the Russian Tsar Bomba. Most warheads are far smaller than that, so I'll estimate the average to be on the order of 10MT's. Note that this will produce a larger fallout than 1,000/50*10=200km,², but I'll use that simplified measure because I don't know how much it will be. The surface area of all land on earth is about 148,940,000 km,² according to Wikipedia. So with that, let's calculate: 4,800,000 km,² for 24k warheads and 6,000,000 km,² for 30k warheads.
According to estimates that I've read on various pages, humans cover about 18 million square kilometres on earth, the rest being deserts and mountains and places where few people live. So technically, there aren't enough bombs to kill off humanity. (If my assumptions are correct.).

We're having a nice conversation about the end of the world, and you have to ruin it with Maths

But yes, everything you said above looks jolly on the spot to me.