Are they just talking about erasing cities/mankind from the surface or the combined energy from them all is enough to significantly disfigure the surface? Or would it be the aftereffects of the bombs that cause the destruction?
In: 1
It’s not literally enough to tear the planet apart like a blast from the Death Star, but it’s enough to cause tens, if not hundreds, of millions of deaths, destroy vital infrastructure (communications, power), and basically ruin civilization as everyone on the planet knows it. Plus the radioactive fallout would ruin the local environment in *many* places.
The after effects of exploding the collective nuclear assets of the world (~19,000) would cause far reaching long term impacts on a global scale. Life would likely not survive. The amount of debris in the air would block sun, plus the radiation impacts would kill for many years, birth defects would go exponential, etc.
And they think it would cause a nuclear winter. Which would put enough dirt/dust/debris/ash into the air so that no food would grow, so could end most life on the planet.
As impressive and terrifying as the explosions themselves are, most of the death (not just to humans, but all life in general) would come from the nuclear winter that follows. Basically loads of dust would be kicked into the atmosphere, and global wildfires would release massive amounts of ash as well. All in all much of the sun’s light wouldn’t hit the ground, and these particulates would stay in the air for up to 20 years.
In the timespan of less than a year global temperatures would drop to below what we had during the last ice age. Global crop failures, mass extinction, civilisation would be totally screwed (even stuff far from the explosions themselves), and humanity itself may go extinct.
It wouldn’t destroy the world. The damage done would be gone within a few thousand years.
Humanity, on the other hand, would be wiped out or at the very least reduced to a fraction of itself, both numbers wise and technology wise.
As far as the planet is concerned, we are millennia away from doing anything meaningful to it.
We can disrupt the biosphere, cause mass extinctions and certainly kill ourselves off just fine, but earth as a planet is going to continue on, give or take a nuclear winter which lasts for less than an eyeblink on a cosmic scale.
It means we have enough to end human civilization. On top of a whole lotta dead people, that means disruption to supply chains like farmers not being able to get tractors and fuel so they can’t grow crops which means the people refining fuel and making tractors can’t eat. This sort of problem would exist for about anything more complex than stone tools.
>Are they just talking about erasing cities
Yes, practically all cities would be gone or succumb to the after effects. Even if a region didn’t get hit, they would not be able to support a city. It’d be back to sustenance farming and hunting.
>erasing mankind
It’s very unlikely that we’d face human extinction. Pockets would surely survive. It’d be a sudden mass extinction event for sure, just probably not all humans.
>or the combined energy from them all is enough to significantly disfigure the surface?
How significant is significant? There’d be craters left over almost forever. There’d be a geological layer of radioactive material for as long as Earth exists. (Which isn’t forever).
>Or would it be the aftereffects of the bombs that cause the destruction?
Both, really. While [the blast is only so big](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/), the bomb’s radiation kills everyone in the city and surrounding area, and makes it a real no-go zone. The radioactive fallout is all the radioactive dust that gets shot up into the atomosphere and kills everyone downwind of any blast site. With full-scale nuclear war…. that’s just about everywhere. Take a look at [where all that ash fell from that volcano in Iceland](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Airborne-ash-detected-outside-Iceland-within-40-70N-and-40W-30E-The-map-is_fig6_230672216), the area is huge. The stratosphere gets around.
Enough to make an explosion so bad, the ash would block the sun from entering basically forcing a winter like Mt Tambora did to a smaller extent (but still causing the Year Without a Summer)
When they say destroy the world they mean the erradicate all life on its surface. Not literally cracking the planet apart.
Latest Answers