Nuclear winter

[Der Kuenstler]

A little conjecture here: Our game group plays with an arms research chart that allows nukes, but not until round 10. The next time we play it will be round 10. This is an even game and there will likely be a lot of nukes exchanged if we get the tech.

My questions are:

If a lot of nukes were dropped at the end of WWII, would the threat of a nuclear winter happen?

How many nukes would have had to be dropped in that day before that danger?

And, if that danger was imminent, would the warring countries have agreed to cease using the nukes and returned to conventional weapons? Or would they have cease fired totally?

[Black_Elk]

I don’t have a ready answer but somehow this video feels like it should be in this thread…

:-D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

[barney]

Hi Der Kuenstrler
I don’t think Atomics would kill the World but Hydrogen would

IDK I think there wouldn’t be that many nukes because the ones who had them would prevent others from the same

[Argothair]

In my opinion, the atom bombs that were available in 1945, 1946, and 1947 would not have caused a nuclear winter. The hydrogen bomb, which was invented in 1952, packs roughly 1,000 times the power of a simple atomic bomb, and the US and USSR tested a couple dozen hydrogen bombs over the years, with no significant cooling effect on the climate. So if your warring parties are dropping ten atom bombs a day for a year (significantly more than anybody really had the facilities or resources to produce), it still wouldn’t change the weather.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-tests-first-hydrogen-bomb

That said, I suppose people could theoretically have been horrified to the point where they stopped cooperating with their governments’ war campaigns. People thought that would happen with ‘normal’ incendiary bombing, and it didn’t really pan out, though. People will put up with all kinds of amazing awfulness rather than die.

[The Hessian]

Hi everyone,
as Argothair, barney & Black_Elk already mentioned, the threat of a nuclear winter was not given by the mid-1940’s . The existing bombs were not “efficient” enough to achieve such a level of destruction. The blast of the Hiroshima-bomb had the equivalent of 13 kilotons of TNT. While the blast of later hydrogen bombs like ‘Castle Bravo’ in 1954 had the equivalent of 15 megatons.
An other important fact that prohibits a nuclear winter is that by the end of the war the USA had produced “only” four A-bombs (Trinity, Little Boy, Fat Man & an unnamed one).

Regarding Der-Künstler’s question if the warring countries would have agreed to cease using the nukes and returned to conventional weapons? Or would they have cease fired totally?
It’s hard to guess. Ithink the democracies might have agreed to cease using the nukes and returned to conventional weapons. If the dictators would is the big question. For example, it is said that Hitler refused to use gas in WW2 after his personal experience of WW1, but on the other hand you have his Nero-Decree in 1945. I certainly doubt that Stalin or General Tojo would cease to use nukes if they could get them.

@Der  Künstler: I’m curious to read about your arms research chart? Could you please tell us more about it? What are the preconditions for the a-bomb? A couple of weeks ago, we tested the “going nuclear” rules from historicalboardgaming.com but the a-bomb was way to expansive to build.

[Der Kuenstler]

OK thanks guys - Black Elk I had no idea that many nukes have been detonated over the years! I think we’ll proceed with no nuclear winter rule or limits. With WWII being a “total war” I doubt anybody would have stopped using these early nukes while their country was still under threat.

Hessian - my arms research system was posted here a while back - it’s basically the same as my last posts about it there. (updates)

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32623.0

[CWO Marc]

Here are a few thoughts on the subject.  I agree that the fission-type nuclear weapons available in WWII would have been inadequate to trigger a nuclear winter, both in terms of their power and of their numbers.

Regarding the questions of “How many nukes would have had to be dropped in that day before that danger?  And, if that danger was imminent, would the warring countries have agreed to cease using the nukes and returned to conventional weapons?”, I think that there’s an incorrect assumption behind them: the assumption that a nuclear winter is something that operates on an “off/on” basis, like a light switch, with the results instantly visible while a nuclear war is in progress once you reach a certain megatonnage level.  In actuality, a nuclear winter is something that would develop over the course of many months or perhaps even years.  The theory behind a nuclear winter (as I understand it) is that a global nuclear war would pump vast quantities of smoke and fine particulate matter into the upper atmosphere, where it would reflect away enough sunlight to lower the planet’s temperature and disrupt the ecosystem.  This is essentially what killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth and vaporized a large piece of the planet’s crust.  Climate change on this scale doesn’t happen overnight.  A global nuclear exchange, by contrast, is something that can happen within a matter of hours; for a good illustration of how quickly a nuclear war can develop, I recommend the HBO TV movie By Dawn’s Early Light, with Martin Landau and James Earl Jones.  Opposing superpowers whose technology is suficiently advanced to have thermonuclear weapons powerful enough (and numerous enough) to trigger a nuclear winter would almost certainly also have the missile technology to deliver these weapons rapidly on a large scale.  In other words: by the time it was clear that a nuclear winter had been triggered by a nuclear war, the war would already have been over for months (or even years) and it would be to late to do anything about it.

[The Hessian]

@Der:

Hessian - my arms research system was posted here a while back - it’s basically the same as my last posts about it there. (updates)

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32623.0

Thank you Kuenstler! These HR looks very interesting. I think I should give it a try in our next game.

[The Hessian]

@CWO:

…
The theory behind a nuclear winter (as I understand it) is that a global nuclear war would pump vast quantities of smoke and fine particulate matter into the upper atmosphere, where it would reflect away enough sunlight to lower the planet’s temperature and disrupt the ecosystem.  This is essentially what killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth and vaporized a large piece of the planet’s crust.  Climate change on this scale doesn’t happen overnight.  A global nuclear exchange, by contrast, is something that can happen within a matter of hours.
…

You understood it right and gave a good summary of this event.