/sci/ - Science & Math

I think nuclear winter is vastly overstated but that doesn't mean you won't be killed by immediate impacts, radiation, fallout etc.

actually it's actually true

It's true that nuclear winter isn't real, not sure about the Sagan part though.

So Sagan saved planet Earth?

You my boy, Sagan. You my boy.

>>2912289
then what killed the dinosaurs

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

nope

So what?

Was it a bad thing to deter the government from using nukes during the cold war?

>>2912308
Asteroid that killed the dinos=WAY WAYYYYYYYY more powerful than all of the worlds nuclear arsenals combined. No comparison at all.

>>2912313
He wasn't deterring the govt. from USING nukes. He was conspiring to oppose their DEPLOYMENT to western Europe on tips of intermeddiate range missiles. The same nuclear missles that Reagan would use as a bargaining chip to get the USSR to remove IT'S intermediate range nukes in 1987. He was wrong in this instance.

>>2912315


Though I don't believe anyone is suggesting that the winter resulting from a nuclear war would be anywhere near the scale of the one which caused the CT extinction.
Even a medium size nuclear exchange with around 1000 megatons of ordinance detonated could take a significant tole on the surrounding environment..

>>2912335

>Implying you needed bargaining chips when Gorbachev was bending over backwards to dispel cold war tensions anyhow

>>2912350
Agreed but not the decades of blackness that Sagan said would happen. Like they said in the wiki article on nuclear winter, the kuwaiti oil wells were set on fire en masse by Sadaams retreating forces with very little of the long term environmental damage environmentalists predicted.

>>2912353
He was bending over backwards to ease tensions because the USSR was a crippled wreck and he needed time to reform it to get it back in the superpower game. It was a crippled wreck because it had been trying to compete for 40 years with moves LIKE the Intermediate range deployment.

>>2912353
This
>In December 1988, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared the cold war over. "The use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy," he said. "This applies above all to nuclear arms."
>He proposed cutting offensive strategic arms in half, jointly safeguarding the environment, banning weapons in outer space, ending exploitation of the third world and canceling third world debt payments. He called for a UN-brokered ceasefire in Afghanistan, acknowled­ging that, after nine years, the Russians had failed to defeat the Afghan insurgents despite deploying 100,000 troops.
>Still, he was not finished. He held out an olive branch to the incoming administration of George H W Bush, offering a "joint effort to put an end to an era of wars".
>The New York Times described Gorbachev's riveting, hour-long speech as the greatest act of statesmanship since Roosevelt and Churchill's Atlantic Charter in 1941. The Washington Post called it "a speech as remarkable as any ever delivered at the United Nations".

America's response:
>HURRR DURR WE WON HUR DURR
>NOBODY CAN STOP US NOW LETS FUCK EVERYTHING

By the end of the cold war, the Soviet Union had effectively become a force for world stability and reason, and the United States had become an evil empire

oh the irony

>>2912388

Or maybe he was bending over backwards because he didn't want the nuclear apocalypse that Reagen was steaming towards.

>>2912400
>>2912403
idiots. If you draw a poker hand thats only a pair of twos you do NOT get credit for kindly generosity by folding to an opponent with four kings. Nor can you say you ended the game to help him with his gambling addiction. It's easy to 'generously' end a war that you were completely incapable of continuing anyway. Or did you think the collapse of the USSR in the early 90's was unrelated to it's dire straits?

>>2912435
>equating averting an insane right wing religious nutjob from initiating a global nuclear holocaust to playing a game of poker

stay full retard, Americans

>>2912446
Reagan: Restores economy to growth, negotiates medium range missile treaty, bombs Khaddafis ass 25 years before it was considered fashionable, basically presides over an era of relative peace.

>insane right wing religious nutjob

Stay classy Europe.

>>2912459

>economic growth

>>2912315
Even a "small scale" local nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would toby the climate in the northern hemisphere for up to a couple of years, and they've only got about 50 deployable operational nukes between them. An exchange between the USSR (40,000+) and the USA & Britain and France (35,000 ish) at the height of the cold war would stand a very good chance of ruining the climate for decades.
Not that it'd really matter, since pretty much everyone would be dead, either from the blasts, or the famine, or the radiation. Even without a nuclear winter, it'd be the effective end of civilisation. It would probably take centuries to recover at the very best.

>>2912459
Criminal:
Iran-Contra treason.
Lied about it.
Likely encouraged Iran to keep US Embassy hostages until he was into office.

Fiscal:
Supply-side economics.
National debt tripled.
$12 billion trade surplus --> $100+ billion trade deficit.
Deregulated savings and loans, precipitated huge economic crisis.
Tax raiser.
Taxed the poor, cut taxes for the rich.
SDI "Star Wars" boondoggle.
Military spending increased to match imaginary spending in USSR.
Deregulation caused oil bust.
Broke air traffic control union.

>>2912468
Rly? RLY!?!? The economy didn't grow between 1983 and 1990? rly? Musta gotten some bad figures ther Sagan (all of which say the economy grew during that time). btw what are your figures for that time btw?

>>2912488
Social:
Gutted social welfare.
Release of mental patients without recourse, homeless population up.
Ignored AIDS crisis.
Abstinence-only sex education.
Strengthened ATF, banned automatic weapons, blamed Democrats for it.
Increased spending for War on Drugs.
National drinking age of 21.
Underfunded NEA.
EPA Superfund grants manipulated to help Republicans in local elections.
Deregulated kids' tv, initiated 22 minute toy ads.
Killed energy programs.
Crack in the ghettos. (? Due to support for Contras and Noriega?)

Foreign:
Wars all over Central America, incl Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras.
Promoted Iran-Iraq war.
Sent Marines into Beirut, abandoned mission after terrorist bombing.
Broke detente with USSR until Gorbachev personally made things better.
Backed Contras in drug running schemes.
Supported right-wing dictators and movements everywhere, including:
Apartheid regime in SA.
Marcos regime in Phillipines.
Saddam Hussein and Baathist regime in Iraq, even after Kurds gassed.
Taliban in Afghanistan.
Manuel Noriega in Panama.
Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

>>2912493
Concepts:
Welfare queens.
Trees cause pollution.
Ketchup as a vegetable.

Appointments:
30+ convicted appointees.
Ed Meese at Justice, porn freak.
James Watt at Interior, idiot, corrupt.
William Casey at CIA, religious nut, strikes into Uzbekistan. (? Uzb part of USSR, maybe mean Afghanistan?)
HUD a corrupt mess in general.
Politicised CIA.
Robert Bork to SCOTUS (failed), segregationist and asshole.
Antonin Scalia, same but he got in.

Personal:
Unfit to serve due to Alzheimer's disease by term's end.
Horrible excuse for a human being in general.
McCarthyite.
Neo-Conservative. (? Isn't neo-conservatism post-Cold War?)
Backed Moral Majority.
Pardoned Robert Walker, who went on to kill his wife.
Started presidential campaign at racist murder crime scene in Philadelphia, MS.
Laid wreath and made speech at SS cemetery in Germany.
Vietnam War a "noble cause."
Helped start right-wing noise machine. (? By promoting myth of liberal media?)
Hated sex, made Ron Jr. feel like a sissy and quit ballet.
Dumb as a stump.
Believed in astrology and used it to run government.
Innovated "talking points" cue cards.
"I don't recall" to weasel out of press questions.
Confused movies with reality.
Outlawed Russia forever, started bombing in five minutes.


Reagan was a shit man. You must be mentally ill to even consider defending him, you randroid fuck

>>2912305
Nice display of creationist logic. You seem to accept manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, as long as you agree with the ideology.

Michael Crichton has a really nice speech about it.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crich
ton/

>>2912490

ROFL i think
>>2912488
>>2912493
>>2912495

Beat me to it... Please get your head out of the right wing asscrack. Reagan wasn't that great, he was a great actor for sure. In terms of progress for America and Americans we've been stagnating since his policies came into effect, It wasnt until Clinton came and changed the surface of everything that we ACTUALLY saw growth.

>>2912504
>Michael Crichton

>taking advice from a man who wrote about time machines, talking gorillas and dinosaur theme parks

And that's without even considering his awful, confused, anti global warming rant "novel" which tried to paint everyone who cared about the environment as a terrorist

>>2912400
>By the end of the cold war, the Soviet Union had effectively become a force for world stability and reason

I can't believe the commie shit you are spewing. Starting a war in Afghanistan and continuing to hold half of Europe behind Iron Curtain, often with bloody measures, are commendable things to you?

>>2912488
>Iran-Contra treason.
Lied about it.
stupid move motivated by saving innocent people hardly treason

>Likely encouraged Iran to keep US Embassy hostages until he was into office.
Pure lies no evidence to support

Fiscal:
Supply-side economics.
National debt tripled.
by the democratic CONGRESS which if you've never checked the constitution is the branch in charge of spending. Revenues DOUBLED in wake of his tax cuts deficits went up because SPENDING went up faster.

$12 billion trade surplus --> $100+ billion trade deficit.
people bought more things from abroad because they had more money not less.

Deregulated savings and loans, precipitated huge economic crisis.
yea thtas what everyone said at the time but the economy kept going for some reason after the S&L crisis

Tax raiser.
srsly?

Taxed the poor, cut taxes for the rich.
Must be why the bottom 50% of income eraners pay like 3% of the taxes today.

SDI "Star Wars" boondoggle.
'Boondoggle' is now KNOWN to have been part of the pressure that got Gorbachev to negotiate and reform faster that hastened the collapse of the USSR

Military spending increased to match imaginary spending in USSR.
yea the 50,000 tanks they had in east Europe sure did look imaginary

Deregulation caused oil bust.
because 88 cent a gallon gas is a tragedy that should be counted against a president as a BAD thing lol.

Broke air traffic control union.
yet air traffic safety got only safer,

>>2912388
No, it was a critical wreck because it was based on a critically flawed economic system incapable of competing with capitalism.
>>2912520
To be fair, after doing a complete 180 in terms of all forms of policy the commies were more progressive than us.

>National debt tripled.
Who planted the seed for this I wonder...

>>2912527
I am not your "us". I lived in Soviet Union, remember the late 80s and know well enough your claims are bullshit.

The words and actions of Soviet Union were never matching each other. It was still a horrible machine crushing civil rights at every opportunity.

>>2912543
Wat. Yes but it didn't fail because it was totalitarian it failed because communism fails compared to capitalism.

>>2912544

It failed because it stopped being totalitarian. All Gorbachev needed to do was send a few hundred bitches to Siberia and we'd still have a glorious Union today.

>>2912544
A very good analysis about the reasons for the collapse of Soviet Union - http://www.aei.org/issue/25991

tl;dr - Soviet Union had a choice of borrowing money from Western governments or starve. Money from Western governments came with conditions. Sending in tanks to crush democratic movements - no money.

>>2912524

>Broke air traffic control union.
>yet air traffic safety got only safer,

Okay, now I know for a FACT you're trollin'.

>>2912605
>ignores massive increases in technology available over that time

confirmed for assmad and stupid

>>2912520
because the USA is a paragon of virtue and would never do such things

>>2912639
Oh fuck you. Yes the CIA did some bad shit in the Cold War. They supported awful dictators and governments that killed thousands of people, often using American arms and funding. But the Soviets fucking massacred people in other countries on a somewhat regular basis for the same motivations. If you can't see how funding dictators who imprison and execute their opposition is orders of magnitude less bad than fucking massacring people you need to finish high school and grow the fuck up.

Nuclear weapons could cause a nuclear winter, IF a significant number is groundbursted
Yet, Almost any weapon in service now is designed for an airburst

>>2912645
>the CIA did some bad shit in the Cold War. They supported awful dictators and governments that killed thousands of people, often using American arms and funding.

haven't stopped yet.

>>2912639
Of course USA is not a paragon of virtue. Yet it is so much better compared to what USSR was (even at the time when one poster claimed it was "force for world stability and reason".

You are talking about a country, that sent military to beat protestors with spades resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries as just one example.

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

No country is perfect, but that does not make every country equal.

USA was imperfect like being served tap water in restaurant and claimed it is Perrier is imperfect. USSR was not perfect by being forced to drink radioactive waste water infected with e. coli and mixed with piss.

These things are not equal.

>>2912652
So two (wrong)^2 = right? Nice logic retard.

>>2912645

The phrase "you can watch a thief but you can't watch a liar" comes to mine.

Both actions ended in people being killed, at least the soviet union was yellow belly about it.

>>2912659

wasn't*

>>2912658
That was not my logic. My logic was that the scale of human rights abuses and general "evilness" was so different.

Being given a dirty look is bad. Being stabbed is also bad. They are not equal.

How come you don't understand that?

>>2912335
If you know anything about cold war history then you know that Reagan was a complete ass who unnecessarily risked the planet so he could get one up on the USSR. He stated at one point that he was willing to engage in a limited nuclear war in europe.

>Test hundreds of nukes
>People still believe in nuclear winter

>>2912689
>hundreds of smaller nukes
>not test them on cities
>not test them all within three days of each other

Read the wikipedia article before you pretend that you know what you're talking about.

>>2912720
>Test nukes in deserts
>Some faggot thinks that wont blow sand away

>>2912724
>faggots don't understand glassification
Which tests were performed in sandy deserts?
Which of those tests were over ground?

>>2912730
>He thinks every grain of sand that comes into contact with the shockwave turns to glass
>He doesn't know about nevada

Only place where the "nuclear winter" predicting models were tested was Sagan's prediction of a year without summer and ecological catastrophe after Kuwait oil well fires.

>>2912756
the Mojave's sandy? news to me.
anyway
>thinks that the number of particles of sand are anything like the number of particles from a detonation in a city
>ignores other points hoping that I won't notice and cal him out on it

>>2912778
>Implying deserts aren't sandy
>Implying you made any other points

>>2912524
Right-wing bible-waiver detected.

>>2912821
2/10

So the conclusion is nukular winter is overrated ?

>>2912967

Sagan didn't come up with the idea of nuclear winter first. It is a theory based on actual calculations.

>>2912821
Google "world's driest desert"
My other points were that

A desert isn't a city, all of it is below the blast and not being propelled upwards, ergo there is more dust from a city that sand from a desert

The bombs tested were mostly smaller than tactical nukes. Those used on cities would be orders of magnitude greater.

Tests happened above ground over several decades, whereas in a war all explosions would be within three days of each other

The majority of those tests were also underground, meaning they didn't create any airbourne dust at all

Nuclear actually would disintegrate cities and anything smokable,
so no, shit wouldn't be released in the atmosphere unlike a simple volcano explosion no matter the size.

>>2913204
actually, disregard that

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Antarctica_a_desert

>>2913204
>15 megatons
>Small

Pick one

>>2913224
most of the tests were significantly smaller than 15 megatons. Hence the "mostly".

Also, you didn't respond to anything else again. Am I to assume that you agree with it?

>>2913224
>Bikini Atoll
>Desert
pick one.

>>2913267
Forgot about "Novaya Zemla" explosion of 57 megaton hydrogen bomb from 60'. Wheww... no significant dust level increase at all.

>>2913283
Feel free to jump in front of a train any time you want.

>>2913286

>>2913283
>Glacier & Permafrost Land
>Desert

pick one.

>>2913293

>>2913296

OKAY TIME TO CLEAR UP SOME MISCONCEPTIONS

Would a "nuclear winter" occur if a significant number of warheads were detonated? Yes

How would such a thing happen? The problem isn't groundbursts, although that WOULD happen in the many cases were nukes were targeted at missile silos, but the targetting of cities. Cities are filled with flammable material, and the power of the explosion would send all that soot and smoke above the tropopause and into the stratosphere. There the sulphate particles would be warmed by the Sun, causing it to rise, and while nighttime causes it to fall somewhat, the cycle repeats itself when the Sun comes up the next morning. Without any precipitation to make it fall again, Carl Sagan argued based on his simple 1-D model that a nuclear winter could theoretically last thousands of years or more.

Here's where Sagan overreached: the primitive GCMs of the time showed that the nuclear winter would not be as prominent in winter (although the lack of electricity, medical supplies, fuel, and non-burning cities would certainly ruin your shit during winter), when the Sun was weaker, and it's pretty unlikely that an all-out nuclear war could cause the extinction of all life on Earth.

On the other hand, recent research shows that a nuclear war would completely fuck up the ozone layer, so if you didn't get cancer from the nukes themselves, you certainly are going to get it after the nuclear war from the massive UV radiation. Another thing is that even a relatively small drop in global temperatures will totally fuck up global agriculture. So the threshold for a civilization-busting nuclear winter is much smaller than previously predicted. The detonation of 50 small nukes over major cities would be enough to cause the starvation of 1 billion people.

>>2912335
nah, he really wasnt though was he? not with nato missiles nearly everywhere in u-rope, turkey, etc.

>>2913349

Sauces:

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Contact-Sport-Inside-Climate/dp/1426205406

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.45/abstract

>mfw /sci/ behaves as if Rudy isn't a troll

>>2912459
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH

Holy fuck I love it when I see americunts praise the most corrupt official to ever step foot in the white house.

>>2912504
where was the science? A man's opinion is not science; it is the lack of belief in the scientific system that prevented true testing of Sagan's Hypothesis.

>>2913371
You must have loved /new/.

>>2912652
>You are talking about a country, that sent military to beat protestors with spades resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries as just one example

Which isn't as bad, as, for example, sending a national guard unit to gun down unarmed peacefully demonstrating students

Stop trying to claim the high ground, the USSR and the USA are as bad as each other, both shitstains on the world that everybody hates

>>2912645
fuck you herp-derping americunt.
LEARN what your country has done to latin america and the middle east over the past 100 years you fucks.

>>2912555

>http://www.aei.org/issue/25991

>The American Enterprise Institute

You gotta be fucking shitting me

Protip: good historiography and right-wing think tanks don't mix

>>2912289
Watch this and "The War Game". American propaganda at its finest.

"Countdown to Zero" is also a fine example of scaring people a la "OMAHGAWD TERRORISTS WILL NUKE US AND CHILDREN WILL DIE LET'S SPEND MORE THAN 35k PER SECOND ON THE WAR IN IRAQ".

>>2912720
> he thinks that Tsar Bomba was small.

>>2912689

Most tests are conducted underground, in the middle of the ocean, or in some desert or empty wasteland

Generally speaking nukes are not tested in forests or cities, the kind of places that would actually contribute the soot that causes a nuclear winter

See:
>>2913349

Also thousands of nukes are not detonated in the space of a few hours

>>2913390
Americunt here, I'm very familiar with the attrocities of my country since its inception both against people of foreign lands and the people here at home, but please keep in mind that they try not to teach it, and when they do teach it here, they do so in a different light than "objective."

>>2912495
>>2912493
>>2912488
holy shit. saved.

>>2912289
>no citation
looks legit

Seriously though nuclear winter would have occurred if the US and USSR had gone at it around the Cuban missile crisis. This is because the weapons of the time impacted the ground or close to it before detonation. This caused a greater amount of irradiated dust to be kicked into the upper atmosphere spreading more alpha and beta particles as well as reflecting sunlight thus cooling the planet. To a lesser degree this happens during most volcanic eruptions.

Modern nuclear weapons air burst kilometers above their target (except silo killers obviously). Although radioactive dust is created not nearly the same volume as older weapons in generated.

honestly the greatest danger of a full nuclear exchange is the background radiation increase. There was an article in the Boston Globe recently that scientists measured a tiny increase in radiation in Boston MA because of the meltdown in the Fukushima reactors. The radiation release from a nuclear bomb modern or atomic is many orders of magnitude higher than the radiation released from that plant.

>>2912524
>Revenues DOUBLED in wake of his tax cuts deficits went up because SPENDING went up faster.
lol, wut?

>>2913501
Dude I think it is clear that in the land of the free and incarcerated it is not recommended to teach actual history so it's not your personal fault. - in fact it's not even majority of population's fault since many of us understand how much "democracy" do you really have by having as many as 2 parties with extremely similar agenda to represent opinions of 300+ millions of people. But when someone starts spreading the official US propaganda "pure goodness because of superior firepower" then it's like a nazi jew joke. Even if it would have been otherwise funny but the historical reference makes it downright sad, offensive and inappropriate.

>>2913387
Are you fucking retarded?
Russia took all the resources and production of its sattelite states, whereas America had a marshall plan for its allies.
Russia killed citizens without reason (or sent them to siberia), did not. Or at least, not a massive scale.
Not saying anything about morality of the leaders, or the people. Just sayin that a democratic leaders have to go through a lot of trouble to hide their actions, whereas an authocratic leader need not do that. Who do you think has more interest in doing immoral stuff?

>>2913573
>Russia took all the resources and production of its sattelite states, whereas America had a marshall plan for its allies.
Just because it seems right to you doesn't mean it's true.

>>2913573
>America had a marshall plan for its allies.

The kind that forced us to buy your foreign crap instead of stuff produced within our own country, and by doing so completely fucked up our production base? Yeah, thank you, Ameritards.

>>2913608
LOL.

No.

>mfw Freeman Dyson sees through politically motivated "science" like Nuclear Winter and Global Warming and everyone hates on him for holding scientific principles above leftist politics

> tendentiously
Good word!

>>2913631

Didn't Freemon Dyson say something like "lol I don't really follow the scientific literature anymore so I can't explain shit" when someone asked why he thought global warming was bunk

>>2913631

>Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[o]ne of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."

>>2913664

It's funny how the guys who say smoking doesn't cause cancer, global warming isn't real, nuclear winter can't happen, the ozone hole doesn't exist, etc. are always these think tanks and Fred Singer

But never much science

Taking sagan seriously is like listing a small plastic gnome masturbating onto a flower as the major reference in your CV

It's stupid, no one of import will take you seriously and you should know better

Tsar bomba - 50 megatons.

Nuclear winter is a bit overrated IMO, but if it actually comes to detonating thousands of megatons of nukes, that's hell of a lot of airborne particles.

>implying any of you fucktards will be able to argue with 10 sieverts in your ass

>>2913891
>implying my parents aren't mental
>implying they didn't build a crazy shelter in the basement
>implying I won't emerge to rule the earth years after the devastation from my underground lair, having fathered a master race with my sister and her teenage friends

>>2913387
Please tell me when USA gunned down unarmed peacefully demonstrating students at the end of cold war (or ever). Wikipedia link is OK.

I DID provide the link. I'll paste it again.

April 9th. 1989 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tbilisi_Massacre

People like you make me sick. Picture fucking related.

I can't believe people on /sci/ are defending raygun

what the fuck is wrong with you people

>>2913406
You didn't even read the piece and threw a kneejerk reaction about American Enterprise Institute site. So AEI provides the translation of the article in Russian language. As if you could have read it in Russian.

What was exactly wrong with the article?

>>2913928
Kent state university.

Learn some fucking history you ignoramus

>>2913928
seriously, do you know any history?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

there weren't as many people killed, but it's obvious what he was talking about

>>2913928
He's probably talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings..

>>2913891
Extensive multi-year cooling caused by the introduction of clay sized particles into the upper atmosphere is not possible with the current or even greatest historical nuclear arsenal. The nail in the coffin was the Gulf war, where we didn't see any cooling even though large amounts of particulates were released.

There is some ground level cooling from the shading and albedo created by contrails, but it is very minor.

The KT impactor expended almost it's entire impact energy into the lithosphere and by shooting ejgecta out of the crater. Where as a nuclear bomb is detonated as an airburst, thereby only lifting particulate matter through the updraft created as air attempts to fill the vacumn created by the blast and heated surface air rises. A airburst doesn't eject nearly as much material as an impactor.

It is technically possible to do it. Remember that any thermonuclear weapon can be scaled up indefinitely so long as you have the necessary lithium, deuterium, and tritium. An arbitrary number of fusion stages can be added to the fission primer. And we know that at least 30 stages could be initiated using modern technology. Also remember that the efficiency of the bombs actually increases as the yield and number of stages does. This could result in a battleship sized nuke with a yield greater than 900 Teratons, twelve times more than all the energy released by the bolide that killed the dinosaurs. And with a directional warhead 60% of the energy can be directed into a cone with an angle of 40 degrees. And this weapon can be launched into orbit using nuclear pulse propulsion then deorbited on any target. But it would take 12 years for the world to produce the lithium and deuterium needed and nearly a trillion dollars to construct the device.

>>2913955
>>2913960
>>2913961
inb4 the protesters deserved to be shot after he quickly skim reads the article

1. The national guard chase away a bunch of protesters. The national guard being on campus and being called out anyway is debatably in violation of the constitution for a start
2. The national guard regroup and stand around in confusion
3. The protesters cautiously return to see what's going on
4. The national guard open fire on unarmed protesters for no reason with rifles and pistols

30 years from now we'll be having this same conversation, but it will be about global warming instead.

>>2913928
>>2913960
Also, if we were to try and compare the soviet army acting in georgia to something, it would be to the US supporting various operations of repression in minor aligned countries.

>>2913955
I did not know about Kent state university '70. Shameful affair 4 killed, 9 wounded - later investigation and monetary compensations to relatives ... of course it does not compensate loss of life

Still it is fair to compare it to the things happening behind Iron Curtain at the same time.

Prague '68 - 72 killed. 702 wounded ... later widespread persecution of everyone suspected of sympathizing with democratic developments.

There is a fucking difference and it is fucking large. And Prague '86 was just one thing while I think you made the worst example by Kent '70.

>>2913984
Well the full reason was that there had been violence the day before. Two protesters and two cops got put in the hospital. The cops got brained with stones, so the called the national guard. But the guard are not for police duty, hence with the previous day's history in mind they were easily spooked when the protesters closed in and fired a volley. Which was unnecessary and violated their orders not fire unless their were fire arms.

Which is why you don't use military units for law enforcement. There training is to shoot, and support any single shot with a volley. They shouldn't have been used in the first place. Hence why they enstated laws that said you can't do that anymore, and created riot control corps with shields and armor but no firearms so that it wouldn't happen again.


But no the US and USSR were not equal in terms of their actions.

USSR total coups and overthrows: 86
USA total coups and overthrows: 48 (they also had a habit of killing their own installed allies if they got really dickish like Diem in South Korea)
UK total coups and overthrows: 11
France total coups and overthrows: 4
China total coups and overthrows: 2-4

And even after Stalin the USSR still had small purges. Khurschev got rid of 200,000 but 20,000 were Stalinists so you might not want to count them. The others only killed a few tens of thousands, some of them serious threats other's not so much.

But how many did the US kill? Even assuming that every single little radical that died was assassinated from MalcomX to all the others and counting every mistake like Kent State: a couple hundred, maybe?

>>2914001
Georgia was part of Soviet Union just as Ohio was part of USA. I have an heretical idea. I propose we compare evil things in similar regions.

I might be called racist or something for this, but I think standard of decency is different in Europe, Africa, South America or Asia.

It is fair to compare Soviet dictatorship in North-Korea with USA dictatorship in South-Korea.

It is fair to compare Soviet mass murders in post WWII Poland to USA misdeeds in same period of Spain or Italy.

It is pointless to take one country from Europe and other from Africa.

>>2913951

IMF-style conditionality was not applied until AFTER the breakup of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's reforms caused the collapse the of the Soviet Union, not the Western debt.

>>2914129
You don't understand. Soviet Union was broke. It could not get loans from free market.

The conditions were not IMF like. The conditions were 'no sending tanks to Poland or other places' and these conditions were set BEFORE the breakup of Soviet Union. The drive for breakup would have been sunken into blood if there hadn't been such conditions.

MARS

IS WORLD OF WONDERS

>>2914138

>The conditions were 'no sending tanks to Poland or other places' and these conditions were set BEFORE the breakup of Soviet Union.

This is not mentioned at all in the AEI article, and I don't see where you're getting this from. The Soviet Union, if led by the hardliners, could have suppressed Poland if they chose to. Sure, the Soviet Union was in deep financial trouble by the 1980s, but this didn't necessarily mean they needed financial aid specifically from the United States. It was Gorbachev's choices that led to such a situation.

And just to clear this up, I'm not saying that it would have been a good thing if the Soviet Union sent tanks in to crush Solidarity. But they definitely could have done it with few ill consequences for Moscow, and it was probably in the interest of the communist party to do so.

>Georgia was part of Soviet Union just as Ohio was part of USA.
Not really. Else it wouldn't have become independent as soon as it could.

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes me wish for a nuclear winter.

>>2914198
Though I agree that the ground for comparison is limited. Even between soviet russia itself and the US.

>>2914184
From the article.

>As a result [of Oil prices dropping], the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year. [One of the solutions was to] drastically reduce Soviet food imports by $20 billion, the amount the Soviet Union lost when oil prices collapsed. But in practical terms, this option meant the introduction of food rationing at rates similar to those used during World War II. The Soviet leadership understood the consequences: the Soviet system would not survive for even one month. This idea was never seriously discussed.

>The Soviet Union tried to create a consortium of 300 banks to provide a large loan for the Soviet Union in 1989, but was informed that only five of them would participate and, as a result, the loan would be twenty times smaller than needed.

>For instance, if the Soviet military crushed Solidarity Party demonstrations in Warsaw, the Soviet Union would not have received the desperately needed $100 billion from the West.

>When the Soviet Union tried to use force to reestablish control in Baltic states in January 1991, however, the reaction from the West--including from the United States--was fairly straightforward: "Do as you wish, this is your country. You can choose any solution, but please forget about the $100 billion credit."

>>2914220
>the reaction from the West--including from the United States--was fairly straightforward: "Do as you wish, this is your country. You can choose any solution, but please forget about the $100 billion credit."
wat
Is that a wikipedia article ?

>>2914247
That was the article by Yegor Gaidar, Minister of Economy and Finance of the RSFSR

http://www.aei.org/issue/25991

I responded to:
>This is not mentioned at all in the AEI article

And provided quotes, where it is.

>>2914220

lol whoops

Nevertheless, the Soviet Union did not necessarily need those loans from the US. This was in any case very late in the game, when the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse. Gorbachev took power before September 1985, the "turning point" in Saudi policy the article identifies, and at Chernenko's funeral he told all the Eastern European leaders that they could no longer rely on Soviet military intervention in case of rebellion. That was in March. So the timing doesn't really fit with the argument.

>>2914281
But the Oil price was already near bottom, in 85. It was a rapid drop too. Of course Soviet power for meddling had dropped with similar rate.

>>2914320

Oil price ain't everything, and the Soviet Union survived through far worse economic crises

If we do suppose economics felled the Soviet Union, then the West didn't have much to do with it. They would have had to get the loans from somewhere, it's just that Gorbachev had a really friendly relationship with Reagan so the wealthy US was the natural choice. Gorbachev already chose to leave the Eastern satellite states alone, well before Western debt became a huge issue.

I was wrong to dismiss the AEI article out of hand, but Yegor Gaidar was too close to the ground to have an objective perspective. A lot of Gorbachev's followers, and Gorbachev himself, would like to believe that it wasn't perestroika, glasnost, and NPT that destroyed the Soviet Union, because if they believed it to be true they'd have to blame themselves