The global stockpile of Nuclear weapons are not and never was sufficient to wipe out the human race. Nuclear war would be catastrophic but not close to the end of the world.
In fact, even an all-out nuclear war would leave 50% of US population untouched.
This estimates potential global deaths from starvation (and does not include deaths from breakdown of society) of around 5 billion. You can legitimately claim these are overestimates, but to say half the US population would be untouched is dangerous and absurd.
The United States has anywhere between 1.5-5+ years of food supplies in grain storage alone, depending on the time of year. And that’s not counting anything in the fields. In addition, the paper you cited makes some very bad assumptions (no change in crops to account for different weather, no increase in land cultivated, not taking into account existing food stores after year 1) that make the conclusions effectively useless.
anthropics cannot be used here.
The global stockpile of Nuclear weapons are not and never was sufficient to wipe out the human race. Nuclear war would be catastrophic but not close to the end of the world. In fact, even an all-out nuclear war would leave 50% of US population untouched.
You need to be aware of the climate effects of nuclear war. Follow the link Max included in his article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
This estimates potential global deaths from starvation (and does not include deaths from breakdown of society) of around 5 billion. You can legitimately claim these are overestimates, but to say half the US population would be untouched is dangerous and absurd.
By sheer coincidence, I wrote an analysis of that exact paper earlier today.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sJK6HN5vTPPnuuNgQ/that-one-apocalyptic-nuclear-famine-paper-is-bunk
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jnDibtfvWNHLucf4D/actually-all-nuclear-famine-papers-are-bunk
The United States has anywhere between 1.5-5+ years of food supplies in grain storage alone, depending on the time of year. And that’s not counting anything in the fields. In addition, the paper you cited makes some very bad assumptions (no change in crops to account for different weather, no increase in land cultivated, not taking into account existing food stores after year 1) that make the conclusions effectively useless.
These estimates are questionable. You should be aware that historically the nuclear winter hypothesis has been the darling of Soviet propaganda.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA165794