While I lived through and can confirm the prevlance of the ‘extinguish all civilization’ MAD narrative, I wonder today how extinguished it actually would have been. (famine due to a year of reduced sunlight from dust floating around was part of the story)
My understanding is that at least the United States considered this problem, and made adjustments for it. The nuclear winter problem is much worse for ground detonations, which I already mentioned; air bursts have less impact, while simultaneously having a much more powerful EMP effect. As electronics became more important over time, the latter weighed much more heavily in American thinking on the subject.
There was also a general shift towards precision in American weapons development, which included nuclear weapons. This is the line of research that lead to tactical nuclear weapons, which have the benefits of fewer side effects like nuclear winter, or killing our own troops, etc.
As a consequence my impression is that the everything-except-microbes-dies scenario was never likely, even in the worst period. On the other hand, I now think governments and the attendant international system are quite a bit more fragile; so a general descent into bloody anarchy and the simultaneous loss of civilization’s high achievements requires much less damage to achieve.
Well, I lived through that time to. And there was much about not just civilization, but all of humanity, being extinguished (eg, the novels On the Beach and Level 7). However, though I recall as a teenager thinking that nuclear war was quite likely, and that it would be catastrophic, I did not think (like many did/do) that every last human would die in a nuclear war. That was too obviously contrary to physical intuition.
So, there was a lot of `extinguish all civilization’ narrative. But nevertheless, I don’t think it was the official line—that was about retaliating by nuking all the Russian military installations. And I think it’s quite believable that that really was the policy. If US bases and/or cities have been nuked, it makes sense to try to make sure the Russians don’t follow up with an occupying army. It doesn’t make sense to also try to kill vast numbers of Russian civilians (though many would die anyway, of course).
While I lived through and can confirm the prevlance of the ‘extinguish all civilization’ MAD narrative, I wonder today how extinguished it actually would have been. (famine due to a year of reduced sunlight from dust floating around was part of the story)
My understanding is that at least the United States considered this problem, and made adjustments for it. The nuclear winter problem is much worse for ground detonations, which I already mentioned; air bursts have less impact, while simultaneously having a much more powerful EMP effect. As electronics became more important over time, the latter weighed much more heavily in American thinking on the subject.
There was also a general shift towards precision in American weapons development, which included nuclear weapons. This is the line of research that lead to tactical nuclear weapons, which have the benefits of fewer side effects like nuclear winter, or killing our own troops, etc.
As a consequence my impression is that the everything-except-microbes-dies scenario was never likely, even in the worst period. On the other hand, I now think governments and the attendant international system are quite a bit more fragile; so a general descent into bloody anarchy and the simultaneous loss of civilization’s high achievements requires much less damage to achieve.
Well, I lived through that time to. And there was much about not just civilization, but all of humanity, being extinguished (eg, the novels On the Beach and Level 7). However, though I recall as a teenager thinking that nuclear war was quite likely, and that it would be catastrophic, I did not think (like many did/do) that every last human would die in a nuclear war. That was too obviously contrary to physical intuition.
So, there was a lot of `extinguish all civilization’ narrative. But nevertheless, I don’t think it was the official line—that was about retaliating by nuking all the Russian military installations. And I think it’s quite believable that that really was the policy. If US bases and/or cities have been nuked, it makes sense to try to make sure the Russians don’t follow up with an occupying army. It doesn’t make sense to also try to kill vast numbers of Russian civilians (though many would die anyway, of course).