[bilbo0s]

Uh..

If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons. NATO and Russia go at it, and we're all just sitting around next month waiting for the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and South Africans to sort out who is responsible for which relief efforts.

Actually, now I think about it, that quad will probably be far more concerned with determining the disposition of the remaining NATO/Russian warheads. So even relief efforts might be impacted by their more pressing concerns.

In any case, the world would just be a mess for a good long while.

[rootusrootus]

NATO and Russia go at it and everyone is screwed, there will be no winners, nobody on the sidelines, no picking through the spoils.

[HPsquared]

Wars are usually like this and yet, they happen. It's not so unlikely.

[bilbo0s]

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there would be nations that survive a NATO/Russia war. Namely, any nation in the Southern Hemisphere not called Australia or New Zealand. Mother Nature's winds and Father Physic's half lives combine to give unaligned southern hemisphere nations the break of a lifetime. (Or of a species' lifetime I guess?)

All that said, you are absolutely right about "spoils". No one is gonna be thinking about "spoils". Probably top of everyone's list of questions will be, "How many warheads are left? And what remnants of NATO or Russia control them?"

We're talking about two groups who would have conclusively shown they are perfectly willing to use their nuclear arsenals to achieve their goals. That, combined with the fact that their goals would become a whole lot less lofty overnight makes me think the world would become a very precarious place.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That's an old assumption. Modern modelling shows that the southern hemisphere gets it's share from the northern hemisphere relatively fast. Only the shortest lived isotopes won't make it down there. Then there is the dust/smoke/black carbon to consider. If there is much, that will make it down there, too. Causing weather weirdness, misharvests, and so on.

[082349872349872]

The mineshaft gap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y

[LargoLasskhyfv]

s/it's/its

[voidfunc]

If NATO and Russia are doing a big nuclear exchange I don't think its a wild assumption that the US and Russia also nuke China, India, and any other country that might theaten to pick apart their carcass after the bombs stop going off.

Nobody is gonna be in a situation to reassert control.

[michaelt]

In the past, things like volcanic eruptions have detectable effects on world temperatures and crop yields.

During the cold war, there was a widespread theory that an all-out nuclear war would produce a similar effect; there are, after all, a great many warheads out there. So it was theorised that even countries that didn't participate in a nuclear war would end up with crop failures and mass starvation. The so-called "nuclear winter" or "nuclear holocaust".

Thankfully this theory has not yet been put to the test.

[red-iron-pine]

why would Australia get hit? no where near Russia, not in NATO, no nukes, and too small of a military to mount a serious offensive

for that matter they're not going to be able to supply much relief effort, either. hopefully they'll pick a side - India or China - and ride out the eventual hegemonic war between those 2.

[4bpp]

Australia did contribute troops to most US-led military expeditions of the past century. Is it that unlikely that in the event of complete nuclear devastation of the Northern Hemisphere, they would be happy to tip the scales in favour of their allies among the survivors by dispatching a few tens of thousands of troops to mop up what is left of the Russian side, which would only be up against a few disorganised pockets of resistance with no supply chain to speak of?

Also, there is a chance that in the event of a full-blown nuclear exchange Russian leadership would see the showdown as fundamentally civilisational, and seek to take Australia down simply because it is unambiguously an outpost of Anglo-American culture.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap - ZAP!

2.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoal_Bay_Receiving_Station - Brrzzt!

3.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Satellite_C... - Sparkle!

[defrost]

0.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha...

One of the places that sends the "shoot 'em up boys* signal to the stealth nuclear subs.

[082349872349872]

> "shoot 'em up boys"

I'd thought these days the signal would be "OK Boomer"?

(I'm still impressed that the РВСН has St Barbara as a patron saint. They claim that it's because they were founded on her day, 17.12.59, but I'd bet it has rather more to do with towers and lightning strikes as attributes, as well as her existing patronage over artillerymen, tunnellers, and explosives workers in general. They make severe waffle irons in Chelyabinsk: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OUQPxihQfQDuPE-8f8X1... )

[ekianjo]

> why would Australia get hit?

when you have 30 000 warheads you might as well sprinkle them around for all allies of NATO for good measure. When you are doing a nuclear exchange that's the strategy anyway.

[bilbo0s]

I'm assuming our Navy would harbor there when other ports were gone.

Maybe the Australians wouldn't allow that?

I guess I always assumed they would. Kind of like North Korea with Russian warships. I don't think we could take the chance that the Russian naval assets harbored in N Korea were harmless. Likewise, I'm assuming Russia wouldn't be able to make the assumption that American warships harbored in Australia were harmless.

I don't know? Maybe everyone's naval ships just surrender or something? I doubt it though. Your nation being destroyed is, in my mind, more reason to fight in those circumstances, not less.

[monkeydreams]

> Maybe the Australians wouldn't allow that?

I think the US leases bases in Australia. Given that a single aircraft carrier group contains more power than the ADF combined I would suggest any that limp back to Australia's shores would be able to continue using these ports.

[petesergeant]

> If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons

Yes, exactly, that's why this isn't going to happen.