Out 'Missiled': How Would America Stop Russia or China's Massive Stockpile of Missiles?

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Destroyer of illusions, Oct 29, 2018.

  1. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I only argue against blanket statements for or against it.
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    That makes absolutely no sense.

    You argue that either it was either never real, or that it had to be real.

    We know from further research that it was never possible in the way the fanatics predicted. Yet you play one against the other and claim neither was possible?

    That is simply being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. And in essence stating that you believe in nothing.

    Then why even bother to say anything? It is like being an agonist and jumping into a thread about religion between believers and atheists.
     
  3. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    It makes sense if you see that the potential impact is still an open question.
    I believe we haven't gotten to the bottom of the question.
    I reject your analogy.
     
  4. DennisTate

    DennisTate Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But there is an answer......

    https://www.sordrescue.com/uploads/4/7/7/9/47798703/01-24-18_energy_now.pdf
     
  5. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Actually we do... Nuclear weapons are dwarfed by the power of a volcano and we have had plenty of those going off in real catastrophic ways. Plenty of the nuclear winter advocates based their hypothesis on what happened following the Krakatoa explosion in 1883 which had a planetary impact (the ashes released dropped the global temperature by 0,18 to 1,3C and caused a vast amount of acid rain which impacted the recolts). But dispersed individual nuclear weapons will never have that same impact. It will totally **** up the area they explode in, for a few miles.
     
  6. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I've read a fair amount of reports on the research and I think there's a question about what would happen with an exchange between major nuclear powers.
     
  7. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And we know even more, looking through the geological record.

    One thing that was only starting to become known at the time that Sagan invented the "Nuclear Winter" hypothesis is the existence of "Supervolcanos". They had been speculated at, but it was only much more recently that the dots had been connected and it was realized that they were actually real. And a great many eruptions have been researched in the geological record.

    Mount Tambora is the largest in modern history, 1815. The "Year Without a Summer". Which was a massive eruption, and changed global weather. For 1 year.

    Now, most "nuclear winter" hypothesis do not even talk about volume of matter ejected. The few I have found tend to be in the range of 1,000 or so cubic kilometers of material. Strangely, none of them ever really give hard numbers, they simply say things like ".5% of ejecta of 9.6x10(8th power) with saturation of 80% in the stratosphere in a radius of 8.4%". Yea, in other words they are simply making up numbers and trying to make it sound authoritative.

    But the ejecta of known supervolcanos now is known. The last one that was almost an extinction event was Lake Toba (VEI 8), around 72kya. This one had an ejecta of around 2,800 km3, and was almost responsible for wiping out humans.

    The last time the Yellowstone Hotspot erupted (640kya) was the Lava Creek Eruption (VEI 8). over 1,000 Km3 was ejected, but it is believed that the cultural effects outside of North America were minimal.

    The November 946 CE Paektu Eruption (VEI 7) was also in excess of 1,000 lm3, and climactic effects were minimal. Late snows the next April, and in some areas a sudden warm snap, then again snow in April. But globally, there does not seem to be much impact. There is no historical record from Europe of any exceptional weather after the eruption.

    Krakatoa 1883 was only a VEI 6. It does not even rank among the top 50 known volcanic events. Climactic effects from that were minimal, and it is mostly known because of habitation and the tsunamis than anything else.

    There are reasons why scientists have pretty much dismissed the entire "Nuclear Winter" hypothesis. It has been proven to be wrong because of other data, collected both before and after the idea was first commented on in public.

    You can dig up the entire area of Nashville, Tennessee to the depth of 1 Kilometer and throw it into the air, and that is still less material than many volcanic eruptions in the historic record. And that would be in a single event, not as an eruption where such ejections happen over and over again for years and decades afterwards.
     

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