How long to rebuild civilisation after an all out nuclear war?

greatcloudlives

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First of all let me save everyone from a lot of needless worry because the all out nuclear war everyone is talking about isn't going to happen. The United States has technical knowledge of how to stop nuclear missles from ever reaching the mainland. Russia loves there children too. They would have to be as insane as Hitler was to push the button on the missle launch system. So this whole discussion is pointless.
 
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eclipsenow

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First of all let me save everyone from a lot of needless worry because the all out nuclear war everyone is talking about isn't going to happen. The United States has technical knowledge of how to stop nuclear missles from ever reaching the mainland. Russia loves there children too. They would have to be as insane as Hitler was to push the button on the missle launch system. So this whole discussion is pointless.
Fine.
How's America dealing with the pandemic?
The collapse can also be from a super-virus - as per the novel Station 11 where 99% of the population are wiped out.

America goes from 330 million to 3.3 million in a month or so. People are struggling to eat.
Then what?
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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First of all let me save everyone from a lot of needless worry because the all out nuclear war everyone is talking about isn't going to happen. The United States has technical knowledge of how to stop nuclear missles from ever reaching the mainland. Russia loves there children too. They would have to be as insane as Hitler was to push the button on the missle launch system. So this whole discussion is pointless.
Apparently the most likely exchange scenario is thought to be system failure (hardware or communications) or human error. Many of the missile systems on both sides are old and in poor repair. I've heard some expert opinion (e.g. people who've worked with the systems) suggesing that we've been lucky so far.

Missile defence systems can only stop a percentage of incoming missiles; both sides assign MIRV targets based on their estimates of this percentage.
 
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eclipsenow

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Apparently the most likely exchange scenario is thought to be system failure (hardware or communications) or human error. Many of the missile systems on both sides are old and in poor repair. I've heard some expert opinion (e.g. people who've worked with the systems) suggesing that we've been lucky so far.

Missile defence systems can only stop a percentage of incoming missiles; both sides assign MIRV targets based on their estimates of this percentage.
Exactly!
Also, no one forget the name Stanislav Petrov.
We owe this guy our current civilisation.
He stopped it happening.
330px-Stanislaw-jewgrafowitsch-petrow-2016.jpg

Stanislav Petrov - Wikipedia
 
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eclipsenow

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Hey guys,
I thought I'd just ask what are your favourite collapse Sci-Fi novels? I like:-
1. Day of the Triffids &
2. The Chrysalids, both by John Wyndham.
3. "The Postman" by David Brin. It's a controversial choice as it was turned into a really b-grade movie (which I never saw for that reason) - but I just enjoyed the thoughts of the main character, a history teacher walking from village to village looking for something.
4. "The Road" Cormac McCarthy is more literature than sci-fi - it won the Pulitzer prize for fiction. But I warn you, it will break your heart. It is one of the bleakest post-nuclear things you'll ever read.
5. "Lucifer's Hammer" - Niven & Pournelle co-authorship. As usual for them, it's on a BIG canvas with lots of characters and points of view. A comet breaks up and parts hit the earth in the 1980's, so there's Cold War stuff as well.
6. "Footfall" an alien invasion novel by Niven & Pournelle again - with a great plot resolution I'll never forget!
MOVIES: "Book of Eli" and "Fury Road" - although I'm not sure this Mad Max movie actually is a movie, or is it more a weird modern art performance piece?
7. To finish it all off, back to Isaac Arthur's youtube essay on how quickly we could rebuild after an apocalypse - just to cheer us up again!
 
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Goonie

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The missiles are launched and all the big cities in the world are engulfed in nuclear fireballs. A nuclear cloud spreads around the globe, the dark settles in, and a nuclear winter spreads across the northern hemisphere. How long until civilisation rebuilds?

THE RISE OF WARLORDS - OR NOT?
As survivors dug themselves out of fallout shelters and started competing for food and ammo, my guess is that some more thoughtful types would already be thinking about what lay ahead. My guess is that as well as grabbing all the food and water systems they could set up, some would be trying to find out if anyone was in charge. Was the President alive (or Prime Minister if we're talking about Australia and other southern nations, which might avoid a lot of the nuclear winter.) Was the State leadership intact? What about the local Mayor? Because most of us have seen Mad Max and the Book of Eli and know that after the disaster, one immediately needs to set up the rule of law or the despots take over. Once the road warriors take over, many good things can be lost from sheer brutish stupidity.

I think sheer self-interest would have many of us pushing to vote for a local town mayor and body of laws. We know the rule of law is a fragile thing, and the horrors if we miss it.

(But even if some crazy warlord takes over – with their militias scaring everyone into submission - this can become a type of order. Even warlords want their food hot and beer cold, want power systems and some sort of order to keep the power on. Technical progress would be desirable, even if the political progress came through painful revolutions later on.)

DEMOCRACY
I would bet on Democracy making a quick comeback. We like the rule of law! Local citizens would vote on things, organise things, and get things done. Before the year was out I’d bet that even if the national government had completely collapsed in the nuclear holocaust, that local people would have set up their own local systems of democratic law. Local mayors would start to negotiate trade deals with other village mayors. Within a few years, enough mayors might have formed together to re-institute State laws and have a State police force and army to protect them from warlords!

INDUSTRIALISING AGAIN
Meanwhile there are scavenging and technical guilds as well as farming guilds forming. They're putting back into their local environment, their farms, their soil, and gradually building up a knowledge base to move forward. We’re most likely talking about rural survivors, as the big cities have been bombed out. In a way it’s a mercy that so many of the city population is wiped out at first, because agriculture is going to be radically reduced without regular oil supplies. Growing their own food will be the main technical and social concern for the first few years.

Surviving tradespeople like plumbers and carpenters and electricians would really be in demand! In some ways their next 'industrial revolution' would be much faster than the first industrial revolution, as we have already know the laws of physics and chemistry and biology that make the modern world possible. The mechanics and techs from the village would wait a while for the radiation to burn off in the big cities, and after a few months start exploring the ruins.

Petroleum only stores for about a year at most and then separates out so that it doesn’t work properly in a car engine. Wood gas engines can cook up fuel for priority engines like the harvester or tractor. Most transport would go back to cycling and horse drawn carriages - for a while. Rural villages would be mainly places where you walk and cycle for a the first few years. Let’s not forget that one man on a bicycle with a trailer can cycle a good 50km in a day to salvage some items. We might even see rickshaws make a comeback to transport the injured or elderly.

Technicians would be able to make local wind turbines and salvage solar panels for their workshops, and would also scavenge the tools and manuals that make them work. Even rural areas would have heaps of useless cars scattered around that could be scrapped for various metals for years to come.

There are primitive solutions for batteries and even refrigeration, so that life in a post-apocalyptic village with enough food and technicians could soon start to have some of the comforts of the modern world. Crucially, they’re salvaging knowledge, whether it is in books and manuals or DVD’s and hard drives. They'd get things up and running eventually, even if the local workshop had to stop working on cloudy days because their solar panels maxed out.

Bit by bit society would build up again, but in a more walkable, human based city plan. Energy would be more valuable and prioritised for the most important survival and salvaging efforts. Finally, some regions might rebuild the local hydro dams or get the nuclear power plants running again. Once they get breeder reactors up and running, any nuclear waste in that country becomes an incredible asset that could power the reformed nation for centuries to come. For more detail, see Isaac Arthur on Post Apocalyptic civilisations. The bottom line? I think within a generation or two, civilisation would be back - in a different shape and with much more energy efficient town plans, but back. What direction do you think it would take after rising from the ashes?
If it's an all out nuclear war, humanity is gone. No coming back.
 
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Radagast

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Hey guys,
I thought I'd just ask what are your favourite collapse Sci-Fi novels?

Other novels (all set well after the collapse) include:
  • The Prince in Waiting trilogy by John Christopher
  • Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (my favourite)
 
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eclipsenow

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Other novels (all set well after the collapse) include:
  • The Prince in Waiting trilogy by John Christopher
  • Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (my favourite)
Cheers!
 
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eclipsenow

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Wood-gas
Wood gas could run agricultural zones and some cargo transport. It sounds crazy, but many cars during World War 2 were suddenly converted to running on wood. Well, more accurately, the wood is burned and the syn-gas fed through into the engine to burn the wood-gas. The wiki explains:-

Germany produced Gazogene units for vehicles including cars, trucks, artillery tractors and even tanks, to preserve the limited supplies of fuel.[1] Even in non-combatant countries, such as Sweden or Brazil, gasogene was popular, as oil became hard to obtain. In Brazil, a racer named Chico Landi won at São Paulo‘s Interlagos circuit in 1944, driving a wood gas-powered Alfa Romeo.[2]

If there was any doubt, America’s FEMA even have a manual on it for oil shortage emergencies. (And you can bet the government have wood gasifier kits in their survival bunkers.) During an oil shortage, most personal local transport would go back to cycling and rickshaws even some horse drawn carriages – for a while. But wood gasification could at least power farming and transport food to feed the nation.

Dirtier emergency fuels like coal-to-liquids might be used, which is not great from a climate point of view. But it might keep civilisation ticking over until other systems are up and running – like the emergency construction of electric trolley bus systems etc that might last longer.
1200px-adler_diplomat_3_gs_mit_holzgasgenerator-hinten_rechts.jpg
 
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Brightmoon

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Island in the Sea of Time. What happens to people if an entire small American island like Nantucket is transported back to BCE times. It was an interesting read because getting modern technology to work even with intact infrastructure was horribly hard without the knowledge to run it.
 
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eclipsenow

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Yes - that's my kind of Sci-Fi trip! I often wonder where we'd be by now if we went back to 100AD* and gave the Romans a dozen modern instruction manuals. You know, the top 10 tools to kick start the industrial revolution - but also a bunch of commandments on how to save the environment and ecosystems as well. Stuff like:-
  • The importance of reserving large intact ecosystems as national parks.
  • The importance of avoiding war and creating large trading blocks and super-states to protect everyone.
  • Germ theory and the importance of soap and washing your hands and face masks during pandemics.
  • The importance of public education and everyone being able to read all this extra knowledge!
  • How to build a large ship and get to New Zealand to save the giant Moa bird before the Polynesians arrive and drive them to extinction around 1300 AD - you know - stuff like that. Scientific principles, education, the best in public policy and medicare for all.
  • The wonders of designing intimate walkable townships around train stations, not car dependent suburbia.
  • How to use coal till they get to hydro and nuclear power - and the safest nuclear reactors and practices from the modern era.
  • How to build such an energy efficient civilisation that atmospheric CO2 doesn't go above 350ppm before they wean off coal onto hydro, nuclear, etc.
  • What else would you add?
Consider that the industrial revolution kicked off just over 200 years ago. If the Industrial Revolution kicked off in 100AD with not just the technical trickery but the public policy and wisdom we have from hindsight - where would they be by now? Would they have colonised the solar system? Would there already be a trillion people living in O'Neil cylinders? Would they have self-aware AI, fusion power, colonies around other stars?

(*Even in my speculative imaginings I don't want to interrupt the writing of the bible.)
 
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Something that would stop the emergence of rap artists, but ensure rhythym and blues. :)
that won’t happen , rap ( which I can’t stand either) comes out of poetry and storytelling traditions that’s very old . The ability to play with words is still prized within the African and Black American communities
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Yes - that's my kind of Sci-Fi trip! I often wonder where we'd be by now if we went back to 100AD* and gave the Romans a dozen modern instruction manuals. You know, the top 10 tools to kick start the industrial revolution - but also a bunch of commandments on how to save the environment and ecosystems as well. Stuff like:-
  • The importance of reserving large intact ecosystems as national parks.
  • The importance of avoiding war and creating large trading blocks and super-states to protect everyone.
  • Germ theory and the importance of soap and washing your hands and face masks during pandemics.
  • The importance of public education and everyone being able to read all this extra knowledge!
  • How to build a large ship and get to New Zealand to save the giant Moa bird before the Polynesians arrive and drive them to extinction around 1300 AD - you know - stuff like that. Scientific principles, education, the best in public policy and medicare for all.
  • The wonders of designing intimate walkable townships around train stations, not car dependent suburbia.
  • How to use coal till they get to hydro and nuclear power - and the safest nuclear reactors and practices from the modern era.
  • How to build such an energy efficient civilisation that atmospheric CO2 doesn't go above 350ppm before they wean off coal onto hydro, nuclear, etc.
  • What else would you add?
Consider that the industrial revolution kicked off just over 200 years ago. If the Industrial Revolution kicked off in 100AD with not just the technical trickery but the public policy and wisdom we have from hindsight - where would they be by now? Would they have colonised the solar system? Would there already be a trillion people living in O'Neil cylinders? Would they have self-aware AI, fusion power, colonies around other stars?

(*Even in my speculative imaginings I don't want to interrupt the writing of the bible.)
It sounds good, but technology comes of age in its time; as an old cynic(;)) I'd still put money on human nature making a mess of it - through selfishness, the will to power, false expertise, selective interpretation & understanding, tribalism, etc., etc. It might well be quicker and nastier than we've managed going the long route...
 
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eclipsenow

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Something that would stop the emergence of rap artists, but ensure rhythym and blues. :)
Ah but if they build up too quickly and nuke each other bad (the starting point of this thread) then we KNOW what the music from that era sounds like! It's awesome and portable - but not like an iPhone.
Fury.png
 
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dlamberth

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In thinking about it, I don't know what civilization is. Are we today really civilized with our continuous wars with the capability to nuke the planet dead, millions of starving and even more with out a roof over their heads or no access to medical help, over population to where we have caused the 6th great extinction and so much more? Would we be better off not building up civilization again.
 
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eclipsenow

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In thinking about it, I don't know what civilization is. Are we today really civilized with our continuous wars with the capability to nuke the planet dead, millions of starving and even more with out a roof over their heads or no access to medical help, over population to where we have caused the 6th great extinction and so much more? Would we be better off not building up civilization again.
Having enlightened thoughts like that means you're part of a civilisation.
If you're not, you're often too busy just trying to survive the latest shift in the climate, migration patterns of animals, or whatever. Sure, some say the Australian Aboriginals in certain more abundant areas only worked 4 hours a day for food and had abundant time for family and friends. But on the other hand, we are close to getting a space industry and being able to build O'Neil Cylinders 8km wide and 32km long. Imagine an artificial ocean in space. Imagine being able to save the whales by having them in space or on a terraformed Mars! Now that's conservation - and all the benefits of modern medicine and agriculture and fine whiskies and fun shows like Star Wars and me being able to have this interesting conversation with you even though I'm thousands of km's away - that all makes civilisation seem worth it to me!
And the ultimate point of this thread is that even if we lost almost everything in an all out nuclear apocalypse, it wouldn't take long to build up again. We've learned things, and would have buried libraries that help us learn them again. It wouldn't take long.
 
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