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by dismalaf 574 days ago
> The soot from burning cities and forests would darken the whole northern hemisphere for several growing seasons

There's already been over 2000 nuclear warhead detonations and nothing remotely like that has happened. In fact, the fallout isn't noticeable at all. Granted, the tests were in remote locations, but all the planetary effects people worry about haven't happened at all.

> Europe cannot do anything remotely like that

Several European nations do have missiles capable of taking out ICBMs, on top of US Aegis sites, seaborne Aegis sites, Patriot batteries, etc...

> There simply is no winning an all-out nuclear war

Depends on what you consider winning. I agree it's bad. But equally bad is allowing dictatorships to do whatever they want because they have nukes. Which is where we're at. One day it's Ukraine, the next it's Lithuania, then it's Romania, Finland or Poland. Or maybe Taiwan. Then Japan. And so on. Where do we draw the line?

1 comments

> already been over 2000 nuclear warhead detonations and nothing remotely like that has happened

They said "soot from burning cities and forests." Nothing about fallout.

This hits a lil closer to home. This summer I lost my home when half our town burnt down in a 32,000 hectare forest fire. The other half is untouched and there's not even soot on the town, nevermind into the atmosphere. Massive amounts of boreal forest burn yearly. So their scenario is pure speculation with zero basis in reality.
> Massive amounts of boreal forest burn yearly. So their scenario is pure speculation with zero basis in reality.

It's speculation shared by nuclear and climate scientists.

15 million hectares burned in Canada alone in 2023. We average over 2 million hectares of burnt forest per year.

Some quick maths. 15 million ha is 150,000km2. Tsar Bomba blast area was 16km2. It would take over 9000 Tsar Bombas to burn as much forest as only Canada's 2023 forest fire season.

Maybe provide some source for your assertion...

> Tsar Bomba blast area was 16km2. It would take over 9000 Tsar Bombas to burn as much forest as only Canada's 2023 forest fire season

The fire burns beyond the blast area.

Also, urban fires produce

> Maybe provide some source for your assertion

Sure [1][2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219184/

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00794-y

Link 1 is talking about blast effect which is a different topic altogether, link 2 is paywalled and is a magazine, not anything scholarly.