| The Quora link you put says the reason the 1980s report is no longer relevant is the drawdown from Cold War nuke levels. The Nature letter was written by Russell Seitz, who is also skeptical against the harm cigarette smoking can do, that climate change has, and so on. I don't know of any scientific views not aligning with profits of military contractors and big business that he is not skeptical of. He is associated with the Marshall Insitute, founded by his cousin Fred Seitz, who himself was skeptical of cigarette's harm, global warming, deterioration of the ozone layer etc. The Skeptoid link references the same thing as the Quora link - that nuclear stockpiles have decreased to where a full-scale war would be less than in the 1980s, when the stockpiles were much higher. For political reasons, it was necessary from the 1940s to 1980s to minimize fears of the impact of a full-scale nuclear war. I used to have an old Stanford Research Institute report which said that if the US and USSR had a full nuclear exchange, the US would get back to current GNP levels - in five years! I don't know how this is science gone wrong - two of the links you put say this is no longer applicable due to post-Cold War drawdowns, and the other one is by someone who is skeptical not only of this, but that cigarettes are harmful, that climate change is happening and on and on. |
Nuclear war certainly isn't desirable, but it doesn't do any good to exaggerate its likely effects.