Aliens attack! Nasty locust skull suckers with super tech built by slave worlds...

[Lancer]

"Yeah, but our brains are going to taste different from the Qulanntx from Beta Lyrae III. "

It really depends on your choice of spices. I'm thinking a sour cream and onion sauce lightly salted.

[notyoueither]

We're the Baskin Robins of brains.

Get your libertarian brains, your republican brains, your liberal brains...

We even have the brains of humans who eat brains.

53 flavours be damned!

[Lancer]

Repubilan brains can be a bit too rich imo.

[notyoueither]

The poor might find them nutritious.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Lancer
I guess I'm bored.

I saw the exact same scenario on TV last year. It was on something like Outer Limits or Twilight Zone. Maybe you saw it too?

[Lancer]

"To serve man...it's a COOKBOOK!"

[Lancer]

I saw it when it first came out.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by GePap


A 1 MT bomb sends out immdiately lethal radiation out to 2.3 km;s, or an area of 17 Sq Km, and causes acute radiation syndrome up to 2.9 Km's, or 26.4 Sq Kt. So within that area we devastated, only a total of 26,400 Sq. Km would die instantly of the radiation poisoning.

The fallout would certainly spread and cover vast areas. But look at the arae under Chernobyl- its not a "lifeless desert", life is there, certainly its not healthy to be there, and as I said, the risks of birth defects, cancer and being sterile are very high, but the fact is much of life is more resiliant than us.

So no, earth would not be a lifeless desert.

You would certainly do a lot to kill most human beings and other big animals, but life would soldier on.

And as I said, if aliens can cross the radioactively hazardous regions of interstellar space, they must have some great radiation shielding.

More on nuclear fall out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout

Also consider that 20% is tundra, 20% is desert, 20% is mountain. How many bombs aimed at Greenland?

Congratulations, you've just directly incinerated over 25% of what is habitable, with the rest of the arable land soon to burn.

Have a drink and pat yourself on the back.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Lancer
I saw it when it first came out.

I liked how it ended.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
Sorry, but you could not really "nuke" the icecaps, at least not really with surface blasts.

Why not? We used to wipe out icebergs by dropping bombs on them.

As for "global warming spiral", all the dust thrown up by the big Megaton explosions would work to counteract that.

If you hit the ice, not much dust will go up.

[DeathByTheSword]

Why not? We used to wipe out icebergs by dropping bombs on them

that is because a iceberg will be in gulfed or scattered by a bomb...there isnt a nuke big enough to crack i dunno how many meter thick ice or engulf the entire north/south pole)...sure you will melt the top of a bit...but above ground nukes arent know for there crater making ability...it is the blastwave that levels everything on the ground...but nothing really under it...

[Dr Strangelove]

IIRC the idea behind "nuclear winter" was that the collective debris thrown up into the higher levels of the atmosphere from the effects of 20,000+ nukes would block out enough sunlight to lower the Earth's surface temperature sufficiently to cause a protracted winter over virtually the entire globe. The offending debris would come from cities, forests and fields ignited by the bombs.

I'd like to point out that these aliens had better be excessively numerous and bullet-proof. The US alone has an arsenal in private hands estimated at 200 million+ firearms.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword

Why not? We used to wipe out icebergs by dropping bombs on them

that is because a iceberg will be in gulfed or scattered by a bomb...

Nope, we dropped incendiaries and melted the things through.

[GePap]

Originally posted by notyoueither


And after all the foilage not vaporized has burned? And after the rest was deprived of light for an extended period of time? How much of the surface could not be called a desert then?

First of all, those results are for "ideal" conditions- ie, the weather is sunny, the land is flat. If the weather is bad, or the land contourted the way damage occurs differs, and ususally lessened. So those specs are worst case scenerios.

Second, heat that can give 1st Degree burns does NOT = heat that can burn forests. Certainly areas closer to the blats will have caught on fire, thought the intensity and wether they spread will depend on local conditions.

[GePap]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Also consider that 20% is tundra, 20% is desert, 20% is mountain. How many bombs aimed at Greenland?

Congratulations, you've just directly incinerated over 25% of what is habitable, with the rest of the arable land soon to burn.

Have a drink and pat yourself on the back.

I will, having done something to hold back the hysteria.

I doubt at the very height of the cold war there were a combined 20,000 MT of nuclear bombs out there.

The proposition was to turn the Earth into a lifeless desert- in that case, the point would be to do as much damage to as wide an area as possible. So yes, in that example you are dropping bombs on unpopulated areas simply to destroy nature. We have some idea that even doing this would not leave the earth a lifeless desert. Certainly it would make it a much harder place to inhabit for human beings and most large animals, bu for life itself?

In an actual nuclear war, various locales would have been hit repeatedly and in ways to insure maximum destruction, so that the areas of total building damage somewhat overlapped. That would have meant the utter obliteration of large urban centers, with less damage to outlying areas than under the scenerio I posted.

Lets be clear- a total nuclear war would do horrific damage to human civilization. BUt lets cut the hyperbole about Planet Earth. Lets be thankful we still don't have the power to "blow it up".