Yeah when you read it in Dune "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing". sounds super cool and badass and like totally brilliant strategy but in real life not so much.
Although I expect this strategy will be employed soon
Unless it's a very limited nuclear war, it would probably destroy the world as we know it, but that's a vague and flexible concept. It would likely destroy countries, societies, our way of life. Many people would die, but humanity would survive.
Some countries might survive. If the war takes place on the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere might be much less affected.
I agree. My much more limited point was that we don't actually have enough nukes to glass the planet; but I could probably have made that more explicitly.
Not sure sterilisation lasts long on earth: life re-claims sterilised areas.
See your favourite massive volcano outbreak, or look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
(The impact of the disaster at Chernobyl is much smaller in area than a nuclear explosion would be, of course. But life has re-conquered everything there.)
It might be worth noting that the number of direct deaths caused by Chernobyl is very low (2 perhaps?). But there have been hundreds of thousands of birth defects in its wake.
The survivors of nuclear war would have a really bad time, but humanity would survive.
None of this is to suggest we should be careless about it; it would be a massive disaster. But not the end.
Although I expect this strategy will be employed soon
https://medium.com/luminasticity/predicting-the-worst-and-st...