• DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Nukes are almost exclusively used as airburst weapons for exactly that reason, as you don't yeet much dust into the atmosphere if you detonate a few thousand feet above ground but you do still get the city-flattening blast. Even if you're crazy enough to use a nuke you still probably don't want to block out the sun and poison the soil forever, and if you do you'd just build a cobalt-59 bomb instead which you could detonate in your own backyard for the same effect.

    The actual radiation from a nuclear war would only be a major threat for the first few weeks afterwards, after which it would rapidly decay down to something resembling current background levels.

    • mark213686123 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      yes extreme radiation is by it's nature not a proble for that long as the intense stuff has short halflives but in that week it could fuck up the environment real bad. Also it's a missile that you've sent off that moves really quickly precision control of the precise moment of detonation is not achievable. Nuclear war is a super bad idea

      Frankly prolongued industrial action by truckers could bring america and a lot of other western countries to their knees.

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I don't disagree with most of your post, but this:

        Also it’s a missile that you’ve sent off that moves really quickly precision control of the precise moment of detonation is not achievable

        is objectively wrong. We've had the ability to detonate warheads at extremely precise altitudes/timings for basically as long as we've had nukes; even the ones dropped on Japan were detonated as airbursts. Altimeters are pretty basic pieces of equipment with high precision.

        • skeletorsass [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          And the altimeter is an essential component of any computer rocket guidance system ever made.

          Anti-aircraft shells also use one for longer than nuclear weapons and more precise.

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Frankly prolongued industrial action by truckers could bring america and a lot of other western countries to their knees.

        Now if only the truckers weren't stupid clowns who protest vaccines and masks

        • mark213686123 [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          that protest started being about being forced to quarantine for 2 weeks everytime they crossed the border which meant they lost money every trip it just got carried away with stupid culture war crap