What are the potential consequences of a nuclear war between Russia and Ukraine?

[Arceus]

good morning gentlemen, the Russia - Ukraine war really scares me, in case of nuclear disaster, with Putin's missiles, what are the worst damages? and which nations are most in danger?

 

[berkeman]

what are the worst damages?

We all die, and only cockroaches and alligators survive. Thanks for the uplifiting post.

Please read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_warfare

Thread is closed. Have a nice day.

 

[InkTide]

We all die, and only cockroaches and alligators survive. Thanks for the uplifiting post.

Please read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_warfare

Thread is closed. Have a nice day.

The first paragraph in that link also links to this, which is an interesting read on the extinction threat. It is not nearly that cut-and-dry.

The nuclear winter scenario has some climatological modeling issues that weren't known when it was formulated in the mid-1980s that ended up being inadvertently shown by the Gulf War oilfield fires: combustion particulates, even stratospheric ones, don't have nearly the atmospheric lifetimes that were predicted by the nuclear winter scenario, and cooling from volcanism (which is what nuclear winter is based on) is, at least from what I understand, thought to have more to do with sulfuric chemical interactions than with particulate cooling. It's an altogether different beast from large fire impacts, either way - the two can't really be too strongly compared. The effect of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption on climate is an excellent opportunity to study volcanic climate effects, given how much better atmospheric data is now than it was even just when Pinatubo erupted.

The long term radioactivity question is much different, and has to do with the types of nuclear devices used. It's not correct to compare unprotected reactor meltdown (i.e. Chernobyl) radioactivity to nuclear device detonation (most of the nuclear energy goes into... the detonation) unless that device is "salted" to specifically spread long-lived radioisotopes. The effectiveness of these devices is not well known - none have ever been tested for obvious reasons. There's also the square cube law to contend with (which incidentally is one of the main reasons that the truly dangerous radioisotopes are the ones that get incorporated into biological processes, like strontium displacing calcium), and the fact that bioaccumulation is generally less of a problem if the substance has the ability to rapidly kill the organism intaking it from the environment.

Even with those caveats, nuclear weapons are still an existential threat to all urban centers in a countervalue (i.e. "kill as many as possible") vs counterforce (i.e. "neutralize as much nuclear capability as possible") exchange, even if the evidence that it's an existential threat to humanity's survival as a species is... a lot less scientifically sound than popular culture tends to suggest.