An Alternate History: What if the Cold War Went Nuclear?
In THIS scenario, thousands of bombs 10 times LARGER than Hiroshima are detonated all over the world. The firestorms left are now hellscapes, the size of states.
What if the Cold War Went Nuclear?
What if the Cold War Went Nuclear?- whatifhub.com |
If you survived the nuclear blast, imagine looking off into the distance, and seeing an unending globe of fire. The extent of this nuclear winter, however, depends entirely on just how many nukes are detonated.
True nuclear war, complete darkness, is only when really every nuke is detonated on Earth. That’s unlikely to happen.
According to Robert Lamb, if a war occurred with around 12,000-18,000 nukes detonated, like in this alternate scenario, the SOUTHERN Hemisphere, though it faced harsh conditions, could end up fine.
After the War of 1983, the world is forever split in two. The Northern Hemisphere for a while would be a nuclear hellscape of raging winters and polluted water.
The realistic nuclear war scenario
the realistic nuclear war scenario- whatifhub.com |
If the nuclear winter theory actually DID happen, it would happen throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Freezing temperatures kill all crops and livestock.
For the survivors, it’s either migrate or die. You aren’t going to have these “Fallout” band of raiders, you’ll just have the cold, sad, barbarians.
So, sorry about that. The Northern Hemisphere is now just a shadow in the history books. Go SOUTH of the Equator, and the story changes.
What if the cold war went hot
What if the cold war went hot- whatifhub.com |
Read Trending One: What If The Cold War Didn't Happen?
Across the developing world, conflicts spark just a few weeks after the nukes dropped. Revolutions, civil wars, genocides, you get the idea.
Dictators propped up by the USSR or the USA, probably don’t survive to 1984. Very few countries actually survive. At least their borders don’t.
What we would think of as civilization is simply smaller. Cities, villages, maybe even united city-states. The reproductions of the Northern War are now too much to bare and borders fall, especially artificial African borders.
What if the Cuban missile crisis went hot
what if the Cuban missile crisis went hot- whatifhub.com |
Much of the history of the Northern Hemisphere is largely destroyed. Information in libraries before the internet, now forever lost to future generations.
As decades go by, the memories of these lands north of the Equator would fade as humanity rebuilt a new legacy. It’s likely 75-80% of humanity, 3 billion people, would die from the war itself, the resulting winter in the north, and the famines throughout the World.
Read More: What if the South Won the American Civil War?
We’d never recover. It’d be a demographic shift of unimaginable scale. But humanity would at least, survive. This is simply, one scenario.
One that entirely depends on just the amount of nukes launched, and who actually gets affected.
We’ll never truly know what would’ve happened if the Cold War got hot, and it’s scary how easily this could’ve been our reality. But it’s fun to theorize.
* This article was originally published here