For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[SOXBLOX]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

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Hey! They took it from BDArmory! They play KSP.

Wait, is that image really from BDA?

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

Wait, is that image really from BDA?

Unlikely. But the laser looks same.

[DDE]

6 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Here's an American article on it: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42673/the-ac-130j-gunships-first-solid-state-laser-weapon-has-arrived-for-testing

Sci-fi is getting real, folks! 

There are five different images on that page with five different beam colors for what are ostensibly the same or similar systems.

*sigh*

[SOXBLOX]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

There are five different images on that page with five different beam colors for what are ostensibly the same or similar systems.

*sigh*

The Pentagon loves to mass-produce atrocious concept art. And presentation slides. And handouts... 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Unlikely. But the laser looks same.

Its not many way to make an laser turret for an plane. Its a bit long now this has the benefit that you can engage ground and air targets with one turret from most directions. 
Main benefit of this laser who I assume is C-130 sized is that you can take out softer targets like trucks, supplies and enemy forces with far higher accuracy and less splash damage than an 40 or 105 mm shell and you are only using fuel to power it, one benefit of the C-130 gunships is that they could engage in intense fire support missions over time, this has been buffed. 
An secondary benefit of this is that you will able to take out a lot of air to air and surface to air missiles, even fighter jets coming in for an gun kill. 

And this is no surprise, all has worked with laser weapons for over an generation now. As I understand Israel has an operational laser who can take out IR guided sam's by binding them,  and they have done test killng mortar shells and even 155 arilery shells in flight, but this is equal to an iron curtain launcher and require an huge plane to get airborne. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Main limit is that it requires absolute asymmetric power to be employed.  In a peer or near-peer environment, it is exquisitely vulnerable. 

But yes, in the fire support role, it is excellent. 

One of the interesting developments of American adventures of the past decade has been work on less lethal and constrained collateral damage weapons - beyond the 'guided' warheads debuted in the early 90s (which tremendously reduced civilian casualties - and raised the bar on what is considered acceptable in combat).  Another interesting development is explosive-less bombs https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/06/17/knife-filled-ninja-bomb-kills-al-qaeda-terrorists-in-syria/amp/

 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Its not many way to make an laser turret for an plane.

Still more than one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Spoiler

 

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Another interesting development is explosive-less bombs

Spoiler

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Hyperspace Industries]

Question: 

Could a hydrogen oxygen burning engine, which produces water as exhaust, break up some of the water (through thermolysis or in other words, heat) and burn the hydrogen and oxygen created, creating more heat, splitting more water and making a cycle of increasing efficiency and heat, stopped only by water leaving the engine? What about if you inject water directly when it is hot? I’ve done some basic searching, and found that half of water splits at 3000’C and rocket engines work at 3200’C. 
Could this make higher efficiency engines? If not, why? And what problems would you need to overcome if it can work? 

[SOXBLOX]

14 minutes ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

Question: 

Could a hydrogen oxygen burning engine, which produces water as exhaust, break up some of the water (through thermolysis or in other words, heat) and burn the hydrogen and oxygen created, creating more heat, splitting more water and making a cycle of increasing efficiency and heat, stopped only by water leaving the engine? What about if you inject water directly when it is hot? I’ve done some basic searching, and found that half of water splits at 3000’C and rocket engines work at 3200’C. 
Could this make higher efficiency engines? If not, why? And what problems would you need to overcome if it can work? 

Conservation of Energy. To split the water, the water has to absorb heat. Sure, it'll give heat back when the split water burns, but it won't be as much as it originally took in. On the whole, you'll cool down the plume and increase the mass used per unit of thrust. That doubly impacts the specific impulse. So, it's more efficient to burn hydrogen and oxygen directly in the combustion chamber, once, than to inject water in addition to fuel and oxidizer.

[DDE]

The amount of extant research literally slows down scientific fields. Unfortunately, the negative trend is rewarded by current ince five structures.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/41/e2021636118

Yet another piece of evidence of diminishing returns of scientific research.

[kerbiloid]

(Idk where to put it.)

Just found a brief review of various ship types with photos and brief descriptions, by mass.

https://knowledgeofsea.com/various-vessel-types/

[wumpus]

On 10/9/2021 at 9:48 AM, Hyperspace Industries said:

Question: 

Could a hydrogen oxygen burning engine, which produces water as exhaust, break up some of the water (through thermolysis or in other words, heat) and burn the hydrogen and oxygen created, creating more heat, splitting more water and making a cycle of increasing efficiency and heat, stopped only by water leaving the engine? What about if you inject water directly when it is hot? I’ve done some basic searching, and found that half of water splits at 3000’C and rocket engines work at 3200’C. 
Could this make higher efficiency engines? If not, why? And what problems would you need to overcome if it can work? 

No, as SOXBLOX stated.  On the other hand, hydrox engines run fuel rich in part to lower the temperature of the combustion chamber to levels it will survive, and part to add hydrogen to the exhaust.  Thanks to hydrogen's extremely low mass, it gets the highest velocity when heated and also the highest momentum.  Since momentum is the whole point of a rocket, this helps increase the efficiency (Isp) of the hydrox engine.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

No, as SOXBLOX stated.  On the other hand, hydrox engines run fuel rich in part to lower the temperature of the combustion chamber to levels it will survive, and part to add hydrogen to the exhaust.  Thanks to hydrogen's extremely low mass, it gets the highest velocity when heated and also the highest momentum.  Since momentum is the whole point of a rocket, this helps increase the efficiency (Isp) of the hydrox engine.

This, now in steam plants you can get high temperature and dry steam who split the water molecules. This was that caused the explosions at the Fukushima reactor and its been know happened on steam turbine warship who redlined their engines. This however will only reduce your power output and probably blow up your engine who reduce your power output to 0, this is bad because your did redline the engine for an reason like trying to evade an superior force. 

[AHHans]

16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

[...], now in steam plants you can get high temperature and dry steam who split the water molecules.

While you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen by simply heating it, I understood it that in steam plants you typically have the water reacting with some of the structural materials/metals (e.g. the zirconium of the nuclear fuel cladding). Oxidizing the metal and leaving hydrogen, which then tends to escape the steam system(*) and can form explosive mixtures with atmospheric oxygen.

(*) Hydrogen considers steel piping more a strong suggestion and not an impenetrable barrier.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

16 minutes ago, AHHans said:

Hydrogen considers steel piping more a strong suggestion and not an impenetrable barrier

 

[kerbiloid]

https://www-interfax-ru.translate.goog/world/796821?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=nui

They have tested a soundless 100 km-range artillery shell.

 

Who wins: an airborne laser or a soundless long-range artillery shell?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

27 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

https://www-interfax-ru.translate.goog/world/796821?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=nui

They have tested a soundless 100 km-range artillery shell.

 

Who wins: an airborne laser or a soundless long-range artillery shell?

FWIW: US is still playing 'catch up' to RU artillery development.

Another question: if no one is left after the long range artillery shell arrives, did it make a sound?

[SOXBLOX]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

They have tested a soundless 100 km-range artillery shell.

Soundless? Shouldn't it be supersonic anyways? If it's supersonic and you hear the shot, it wasn't aimed at you. 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

Soundless? Shouldn't it be supersonic anyways?

Idk, just quoted. Maybe it's well-lubricated and slips through the air.

Or maybe it's so fast that the sound gets lost far behind and decides to not follow.

[TheSaint]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

https://www-interfax-ru.translate.goog/world/796821?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=nui

They have tested a soundless 100 km-range artillery shell.

 

Who wins: an airborne laser or a soundless long-range artillery shell?

"Soundless" sounds to me more like marketing than actionable intelligence.

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Soundless? Shouldn't it be supersonic anyways? If it's supersonic and you hear the shot, it wasn't aimed at you. 

Assumes so and an long range artillery shell has to go supersonic to get the ballistic range. As this is auto translated from Russian who probably uses an English source I assume an translation error. 
100 km is still an insane range for an artillery shell. 

[DDE]

8 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Assumes so and an long range artillery shell has to go supersonic to get the ballistic range. As this is auto translated from Russian who probably uses an English source I assume an translation error. 
100 km is still an insane range for an artillery shell. 

The SSCA prgram aims for 1000 miles. It's going to be more of a ramjet missile than a shell.

[SunlitZelkova]

On 10/2/2021 at 3:31 AM, kerbiloid said:

A nuke doesn't devastate the territory, and most of fabrics are reinforced against it. Also there is nothing special in the arms fabrics of XX. They wouldn't need to produce submarines with SLBM and stealth bombers.

The civilians would either rely on the army or be forced to rely on it.
Because any authorities would first of all take under control any available resource, including food.
Also they would need working arms to restore the territory.
And everyone who doesn't rely, would automatically become their competitor and declared an out-of-laws bandit.
That's why any survived individual postapocaliptic survivor is just a romantic hero of fantasy movies.

The system of the state/province/nation authorities is exactly the form which had forced the people work together widely, not locally.

The Wild West was just a peripheral rural area of industrial civilisation, populated by lawful farmers and bartenders, and was far from the cinematographic lawlessness.

(Also, the spaghetti westerns were filmed by the Italian director in Spain, lol.)

Also it was serviced by the railroad built exactly for that.

The purpose of the Wild West was to herd Lawful Good cows instead of Chaotic Neutral bisons on the grassland useless to the date as plowland due to the climate.
Nothing like anarchia was there.

What I meant by Wild West is that there is civilization but not necessarily "someone" there to help one's self immediately, and maybe some crime waves from time to time.

On 10/3/2021 at 12:21 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

@SunlitZelkova  Good morning!

So - first things first: in the popular imagination, people VASTLY overestimate the efficacy of nuclear weapons.  We think in terms of completely destroyed cities and seas of glass and irradiated wastelands un-populable for centuries.  Get that out of your mind.  The primacy of how you view a nuclear exchange should be as bombs.  Full stop.  Look primarily at the explosive effects, from cratering to burn zone to concussion zone.  The 'scary stuff' (i.e. radiation which no one can see and few understand) has either very short term effects which are rapidly attenuated by weathering, distance or decay, or very long term effects that are effectively ineffective. 

This is not to minimize the threat; when you look at just the bomb aspects; they're still incomprehensibly brutal.  I posted above that the US has 310 cities and 19,500 towns (many of which are clustered around the cities).  You can overlay the effects of 2k bombs of various yields from Russia and China atop those cities, and just looking at the 'bomb' effects eliminate a significant portion of the population... but you need to anticipate that most outside of the impact devastation survive - at least for a while.*

• No one survives the crater zone.
• A rare few survive the thermo effects, for a short period (think people in deep basements or reinforced concrete structures).  Absent almost immediate outside medical intervention, most of those burned die - but some will linger.  Some rare few will recover.
• In the concussive zone, depending upon building materials** you get an expanding ring of survivors. 
• Outside the concussive zone, most people survive.  (I say 'most' because you get a few who just decide to not go on, and some who die by accident or civil disturbance or even shrapnel/debris)

The radiation will get a few:

• Crater/thermo people also get the most radiation, but they're likely killed by mechanical injury.
• Some few people in the concussive zone, and a rare few just outside it who get a full dose (i.e. they're completely exposed, watching it happen) will get irradiated and die.  Note: these people are almost all within 1km of the impact/detonation, and have a direct line of sight to the explosion.  People outside of 1km ( and esp. outside of the concussive zone) who witness or are exposed the explosion likely survive.***  People in the concussive zone, but indoors/behind a structure likely won't get the killing dose of radiation.
• Fully exposed people who escape the concussive effects can still be casualties of thermal radiation (burns) - but most people inside buildings are shielded.
• In the aftermath - some rare few will eat food or inhale dust contaminated with radioactive fallout - most of these will get sick but many can recover.  People merely exposed to fallout who take care not to ingest radioactive material and who clean themselves are generally fine.  Those who remain indoors in intact structures survive.
• People who remain too close to ground zero (heavy concentrations of irradiated fallout resistant to weathering) for too long will get cooked - like standing in front of an open microwave - but those areas are in or adjacent to the craters.  Those effects are almost completely mitigated in a matter of years (not decades).  "Fallout Plume" maps show places where people will have a higher than normal chance of getting a cancer sometime in their lifetime; read w/in 70 years. You should largely ignore those.

Okay - for story purposes, you've dealt with Day One.  While on a global or regional level, there may be 'secondary salvos' or follow-on waves of launches... at this point, none of that really matters to individual survivors.  You either got a Day One event or you did not - and if you get a subsequent bomb, that's your own personal Day One.

...

So - you have people who survive Day One.  Their next day is measured in individual hours.  Each hour is a survival event.  Time for people in crisis flows differently than for those of us experiencing bland normality.  I don't care where you are in the world, you are in shock.  Survival mode.  Survive Day Two?  Your life is now measured in Days.  Each Day seems an insurmountable, confusing Event.  Survive the first Week?  You are still counting Days, but now those are used to measure Weeks.  You find yourself breathing and mourning and planning.  Survive the first Month?  This is now your life.  The fear is less immediate - but its a presence you still feel and taste.  The future is actually a thing you can comprehend.  You still have to survive the oncoming Seasons, but if you do... if you make it to a Year? 

Congratulations, you are a Survivor - and have fully adapted to your new reality.  LIFE GOES ON.

...

I think it is likely that we in the Northern Hemisphere overestimate the degree to which most of the world has integrated to and relies upon the Global Economy - for anything other than 'nice to haves'. 

A fair analogy is that the US, Canada, Europe (including Western Russia) and the strongest economies of East Asia are 'cities' that rely upon the rural parts of the world for goods and services; but to think that people in the 'rural' areas need the cities to survive is a fallacy.  Sure, they like phones and XBoxes and Tractors - but do they really, really need financial services, retirement advisors, marketing departments, research universities, lawyers, economists or government agencies to go on?  Think about the 'Arrogant American General' meme - the guy who wanted to bomb the Taliban back to the stone age, only to discover they were already there.  (This analogy requires appreciation for a simple fact: modern humans are not stupid - whether the Sioux & Comanche, the Viet Cong or Taliban - not having technological equality to your foe does not equate to an instant loss.  "Stone age" is an economic feature; take a time machine back and rescue Otzi before he died in the ice... he'd be using cell phones and driving within a year of being brought here.)  You should look up Eastern Pakistani weapons market info: blacksmiths were forging replacement parts to AKs and ARs to get them back into service, and people were soldiering and taping phones back into action.  These are examples of humans' smart, tough and resilient traits.  Guided bombs are nice-to-haves.

Famine will be a feature of the aftermath of a global (Northern Hemisphere) nuclear war.  It will be concentrated around the city-centers and littorals of the Northern Hemisphere - and occur on certain islands and parts of un-bombed Northern and the Southern Continents that are overly dependent on foreign food (think over-populated Middle Eastern / North African areas and major cities of Africa and SA.)  Those people I mention above who survive the First Year (esp. teens & 20-somethings) - get to see their grandkids.  So what's a fair number to speculate?  I think you get decreasing rings of famine radiating from each city; those in the most rural/self-sufficient parts of the world remain largely unaffected.  Those who need food brought to them?  They are in trouble - and yet some will be so tough and resilient to survive in every zone.  So what is that number of Day One Surviving city-dwellers who subsequently perish to famine?  1/3?  1/2?  I don't think it's more.  The family willing to walk 75 miles into the most rural area and collapse at grandma's house?  They make it.

 

Why?  That's pretty bitter.  Even after a total collapse, people will find that working together enhances their individual chances of survival - but I think your question is larger than that; I agree that what comes after won't be a carbon-copy, but on a fundamental level I do think that you get cities again and along with that economic and political structures that are analogous to what is currently in place.  The names and causes will change - but the structures are simple and thus will be there.

Here, I have to question the time-scales we are discussing.  Within the first year, you very easily get city to county level governments up and running, and in many places regional powers that resemble states.  So, what then does the next decade or so look like?  Big question.  We could end up with a bunch of Feudal states like Japan and Europe had for centuries.  But - those arose out of societies where basically Mafia/Gang/Tribe warfare was the norm and family political power was everything.  I'm not sure that comes back.  Places like the US and Canada are saturated with representative government as the norm - you could get a few 'Strongman States', but I think you get more variations on elected governments (ala Western US Territories - perhaps rampantly corrupt, but at least initially set up with the structures of democracy).  Sadly I don't know enough about China or Russia today to predict what happens to them once Central Civil Oppre-ahem-Authority is lost.  Does China revert to warlords and Three Kingdoms-style or do local collectives form and spread - or is the fear of chaos so great among the Chinese that they band back together into a One China no matter what personal cost (and regardless of what form/economy that government takes)?  Does Russia get a Strongman / Tsar or does it rise again as independent successor-states?  I think you have to have an appreciation for the regional collective imagination, fear and mythos to predict those answers.  (This is why America does not get 'Kings')

Again - on what timescales?  I refer you again to the Pakistani blacksmith rebuilding factory-built arms using a coal forge in a wood and cloth structure: that's happening in the First Year.

"Prior Authority Figures" - yeah, I'm with you on this: they're either dead or no one trusts them.  At best they get to be a 'local strongman' (presuming they land on a military base that survives and are not killed out of hand)... but they're done.  Exception being Southern Hemisphere and 'Rural' world leaders; those who survive the First Year likely see their power increase.

Nation/State/Province sized organizations re-occur within the First Decade.  Out of necessity.  It's a way of protecting your border and extending your authority.  Towns will band together into economic, political and military unions and grow and absorb others until they are matched - those become the new borders.  Then, those states will either band together or contest one another in the coming decades.  W/in 50 years you get nations again, with sizes that resemble today's.  (Sure, a continent-wide nation like the US might initially break up and then reform into 3, 5 or 7 independent nations... but for how long?  The memory of America will be a fond one, the 'Good Ol' Days' and the evil Enemies who did this to us a threat answerable by collective government and plural/integrated economy - the West will Rise Again!)****

Also - people WILL resettle the cities.  Because, for no other reason than they're already located on the best water sources.  People live in the Littorals and Riparian areas for a reason - and something as inconsequential as a war will not change that basic need.  The road networks leading to those places survive.

 

Finally - vis, the "Wild West".  This is a 30 year period rife with beautiful and romantic imagery - for the 'winners'.  But it wasn't so rigidly contained in time.  It's the culmination of 400 years of replacement population (emigration).  You have to appreciate a few things; the 'wars' between the various Native Nations and the uncontrolled horde washing across the continent always had an inevitable conclusion.  By 1860, there were 31 Million people east of the Mississippi that called themselves Americans.  West of the Mississippi there were approximately 300,000 members of various Native Nations that had neither the population, or the technological or economic structures to resist this flood of humanity.  By 1890 there were 90 Million Americans, and still about 300,000 Native Americans contesting for control of an area of 1.8 Million square miles.  The result was foregone.  Factually, the people moving into the West from the East were literally walking into the Wilderness... the fact that other people lived there before them and might want to continue to use and control the land in their traditional ways was 'background' information and anecdotal.  

FWIW - the only way to 'win' Afghanistan would have been for something analogous to the American West to have occurred, whether by the Russians or the Americans; no one was interested in doing that, however.

So there might be a period of time where 'wild-west' style anarchy / freedom reigns in places; I just don't see that lasting more than a few decades before the inevitable blanket of 'civilization' reasserts control... and once that happens? 

We're back to the races.

The NEW 'modern' post-war NORMAL.

 

 

 

 

 

* This site: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein (nuclearsecrecy.com) presents data slightly differently than I do.  I tried to do St. Louis - but it wants to kill Lexington (for me).  I used a Chinese Dong-Feng 5 as the weapon.  The 'Airburst' map contains the crater and what I call 'thermo' zone in the fireball, with what I call the concussive zone as 'moderate blast damage'.  The site's 'thermal radiation / 3d degree burn' radius is for people out golfing or otherwise outdoors - those indoors are protected.  

**Japanese cities' abundant use of wooden construction meant that the thermo-effects created a conflagration which extended past the thermo zone, and those same structures were less effective at withstanding the concussive effects - whereas newer concrete and brick structures (factories) remained, surviving both.  Modern buildings will increase the survival rate of future victims.

*** These projections are pretty good - but need to be adjusted (slightly) for the yield.  If the cratering/thermo zone extends beyond 1km, they still apply to people in those particular bomb's concussion zone and those outside of it.

****Okay - Rome (as an empire) did not return once destroyed, but the successor states incorporate many of the ideals valued by the Greeks and Romans - and those survive.  One might argue that it took 1600 years for Rome II (America & Pax Americana) to arise again - but it did)

VC-Nuclear-Safety-18pp-Education-Guide-Downloadable-FINAL.pdf (pcdn.co)

 

Ask yourself whether a Pakistani-Indian Nuclear Exchange would leave cities that resemble Japan's, given the differing building materials.  

Thank you for your reply! I am going to color quote your post and my response is indicated by the color. The reply to the astrixed notes at the end are indicated by the number of astrixes.

I don't disagree. To clarify my position, I am not saying that nuclear weapons will destroy the environment which will then lead to societal collapse, I am saying that the physical destruction from then nuclear weapons- that is, the blast, ignoring radiation- will then cause economic havoc which will then lead to societal collapse.

So not so much "things (like hospitals, factories, etc.) have been physically destroyed so society cannot survive", but more so "key nodes in this imaginary system called the economy that humans have created to control and regulate their greed have been physically destroyed so the rest of the system will topple".

I don't disagree with this part per say, but I still maintain my doubts. Yes, Xboxes and Tractors are unnecessary and life will go on without them, but this was not really my point (I should have made it clearer, I apologize).

https://article36.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Economic-impact.pdf

https://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919216305851

The first is about the non-kinetic effects of nuclear weapons. Effects on agricultural are not heavily mentioned but electricity is still necessary for food mass production (of the level needed to maintain the needs of the millions of survivors) and of course with how people are supposed to obtain the food is also an issue. Rationing? Are these millions of survivors migrating from the cities really going to peacefully stand in line for days just to get something that can barely feed their family? Thus start the food riots, which devolve into crime or wars, and thus society collapses. One might argue that "thanks" to the famine, eventually the number of mouths will drop to a level that the food production system can feed without issue, but those potential famine victims will not go quietly into the night.

The next is about food security on the individual level. This is why the southern hemisphere is in danger of collapsing as well even if the nuclear war is limited to the northern hemisphere. Money will still exist in the southern hemisphere which makes trying to feed people even more harder. For most of its history capitalism hasn't exactly been great at adjusting to help those in need when their numbers skyrocket to become the majority. Thus conflict, revolution, war, and societal collapse, at least on the national level.

The last is about food security on the national level. This isn't an overview of food security itself as much as it is an explanation of how to interpret food self-sufficiency graphs (which often are just percentages with no explanation). Unfortunately I could not find a national food self-sufficiency graph apart from this one from the Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries which has been archived on Wikipedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_self-sufficiency_rate - most cover individual food security. If the No. 8 country on the list is already at 40% (37% as of 2020), what can be expected of the developing world? Hence the food riots, conflict, and then societal collapse on the national level.

Even if the tools to make food "are there", unfortunately large numbers of humans don't really do "stuff physically"- an imaginary system exists in their minds that quickly gets overcomplicated and inefficient (note- this is not to argue that "imaginary system" isn't necessary- but it does indeed have faults)- hence I am skeptical that survivors could regroup and feed themselves, followed by rebuilding society.

The whole Wild West thing was about what society might "look" (literally look) like, not the exact nature/mechanics of it. I think I am going to drop this statement because it is unnecessary.

*- Answered by my response in green.

**- It is important to also take into account the effects of fires burning uncontrollably which would suffocate victims. Dresden had modern buildings yet the number of casualties was still high. People survived in modern buildings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably because there were few people in them at the time- both bombings occurred with no warning. If you get hundreds of people into basements you will end up with lots of deaths from asphyxiation.

***- This was presumably just a note about some of your figures so no response.

****- I don't disagree that national level organization could eventually arise again *someday*, but whether it will manage to reach the same level of technology and sophistication is something I am skeptical of.

In regards to your last sentence, I think this is another opportunity to clarify my position. In a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, yes, the damage to structures would be different from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but the death toll would be far higher, economic effects just as devastating as the WWII air raids on Japan, and whether people would really be up for getting behind the same people who will probably be held by many as the initiators of the war (the ruling national government) for an "Arduous March" style movement towards recovery is dubious. Thus, my position is not that the physical damage from nuclear weapons will cause societal collapse, but that the non-kinetic effects will eventually lead to it.

----------------------------------------

I apologize to you two for suddenly disappearing from the conversation. Some stuff occurred in real life and I was unable to reply immediately.

[SOXBLOX]

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42717/robot-dogs-can-now-have-6-5mm-assault-rifles-mounted-on-their-backs

Hey, it's Terminator's best friend. Sarah Connor, watch out! 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

A little light reading for the history buff who likes fast combustion 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/scientists-test-medieval-gunpowder-recipes-with-15th-century-cannon-replica/%3famp=1