Talk:Nuclear holocaust

Earth (sort of) is not nuked in Battlestar Galactica

Here's the information on it:

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Earth_(RDM) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.129.15.93 (talk) 12:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization

This came up as a result of a move discussion at List of nuclear holocaust fiction. I'd like to reword the article slightly, as "nuclear holocaust" is incorrectly capitalized ("Nuclear Holocaust") in the body text and the article title. Common usage is to spell it as "nuclear holocaust" (lower case), as demonstrated by a Google search on the term. (The upper-case spellings tend to occur only in headline text, where most words are capitalized; the term is in lower case in body text.) Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 02:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Further to this, the American Heritage Dictionary defines holocaust as follows:

"Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire."

"Holocaust: The genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II"

The definition is accompanied by a usage note that says:

"When capitalized Holocaust refers specifically to the destruction of Jews and other Europeans by the Nazis and may also encompass the Nazi persecution of Jews that preceded the outbreak of the war."

The usage note also references the term nuclear holocaust using the lower-case form. --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the appropriate thing to do here is, but the closest thing to a relevant style guide is this: WP:MILHIST#NAME. There's currently no explicit mention of particular major events/conflicts/conflagrations in the Manual of Style for capitalization.]] It seems as though the caps for this article and the associated list might be best determined by whether we define "Nuclear Holocaust" as a single, particular event like The Holocaust or a class of events. In the former case, it should likely remain capitalized, like World War III. If not, should drop the case of holocaust. Suggestions? Ideas?

Noted this discussion in Requested Moves MrZaius^talk 03:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The Holocaust was not a single event, it was a set of events in which Nazis attempted to obliterate Jews, Romani, and some other people. Imprisonment in ghettos was a set of events, Kristallnacht was another set of events, the taking of Jews by train to the camps was essentially an event for each trip so taken, and so on and so forth. Each gassing also counts as an event. So we're talking potentially hundreds of thousands, or millions, of events, that make up the Holocaust. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 04:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The article may need a reworking in respect to the "Holocaust" reference - some descriptions of the term attribute it to the "fire" definition ("holocaust") as opposed to a connection with, or comparison to, the World War II atrocity ("The Holocaust"). --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Lowercase is appropriate. Unlike the Holocaust, "nuclear holocaust" is a concept, not a proper name. Croctotheface 12:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Is "The Holocaust" a proper name? I thought it was a concept too. One holocaust happened, the other may happen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.197.15.138 (talk) 06:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

above comment is correct. When one happens, then we can use capitals when referring to it. Untill then lowercase. 88.107.171.217 (talk) 13:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the page, per the request at WP:RM and the above discussion. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

interwiki missing

Hi. Unfortunately I don't know how to insert the link myself. The German article about nuclear holocaust can be found here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuklearer_Holocaust 86.59.64.78

I can understand the significance of the ending of "A Canticle for Leibowitz" within the context of this article, but is it really necessary to spoil the end of the book to make a small point? I mean, seriously, I was considering reading that book sometime. LAME, to say the least, so I deleted it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 35.8.250.103 (talk) 13:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Second paragraph talking about "Holocaust"

Maybe that information is better suited for Holocaust. It seems to be extra information that doesn't fit in the context of this article. ~ digx t·c 12:57, 21 November 20 08 (UTC)

agree - this page should focus on the nuclear side. 86.161.88.222 (talk) 14:02, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

the end is nigh

we're all going to die regardless of politics and nuclear war so lets just have some cake :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.100.14 (talk) 00:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Do any scientisst really believe that "the loss of much modern technology" would result in the end of human life on earth? They must be geeks of the first class. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.197.15.138 (talk) 06:27, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I just removed a merge tag from the article that had been there since May of 2013. There has been no discussion here or at the target site, so I'm assuming it's a dead issue. (I think it would be a mistake to merge.) The proposed target page was Nuclear warfare. Dcs002 (talk) 07:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Adding discussion of actual effects of nuclear war

Currently the page has very little actual detail on the effects of a nuclear war (initial destruction, EMPs, nuclear winter, etc.). I'm going to start work on adding sections detailing these. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vluczkow (talk • contribs) 18:38, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I just added a section outlining EMP as a secondary effect of nuclear war and as a possible source of widespread loss of life. Davearthurs (talk) 18:15, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I would like to make the article a bit less focused on the extinction hypothesis. Holocaust is defined as "destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war." Large-scale destruction is important to consider in this article, even if it is not as relevant as complete extinction. Hence, I added a section "Likelihood of nuclear war" and renamed "Origin and analysis of the extinction hypothesis" to "Likelihood of complete extinction" for consistency. Davearthurs (talk) 23:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I just rearranged the article so that the "Likelihood of complete extinction" section only discusses probability of extinction. The other remaining content in this section was largely historical, so I revived the old "Origin and analysis of extinction hypotheses" section heading and moved it to there.

Updating and clarifying historic references

Some claims in this article about the expected number of casualties from nuclear exchange cite studies conducted in the 1980s. In some cases, it is not clear which nuclear effects these studies are considering - direct nuclear blast, radiation, fallout, nuclear winter, EMP, etc. When a study is mentioned, it would be helpful to mention the year of the study and also what nuclear effects are being models, since very different numbers can be justified by different models. I will try to clean this up.Davearthurs (talk) 18:21, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Current mainstream view on nuclear winter and extinction?

User:SamuelRiv, I'm not a climatologist but it seems to the me that Martin 1983, Robock 2007, and Tonn 2009, while none of them are definitive, suggest to me that the current mainstream scientific view is that following a global thermonuclear war, the scenario where there are some survivors is more likely than the scenario where the human race goes extinct. Also, Robock 2007 is cited by [1], which explictly states: "While it is important to point out the consequences of nuclear winter, it is also important to point out what will not be the consequences. Although extinction of our species was not ruled out in initial studies by biologists, it now seems that this would not take place." More informally, Luke Oman (who was a co-author on Robock 2007) had an interview where he initially characterized the in-model odds of extinction as "1 in 10000" and suggested his colleagues agreed it was unlikely. Are there any current models where extinction does occur? Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:26, 14 June 2016 (UTC

I'll look into it as I only just started getting interested in the subject, but I'll take the studies you posted as representative. But "not supported by science" is a definite no for wording. "Models from the past decade consider extinction (very?) unlikely" or something to that effect would certainly be good for that section.

Fwiw, I would only say a conclusion is "not supported by science" if it is not a result in any credible model of recent decades and has almost zero credibility in academia, and even then I'd only use that in writing if the subject was pushing pseudoscience or being politicized for the purpose of pseudoscience. For example, I wouldn't even use the phrase to describe something like MOND, even though it has almost no support even from those who work on it, since in that particular case the theory had been proposed and is studied well within the merits of proper science. Essentially "not supported by science" sounds like a total diss. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:45, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Preparation of nuclear famine page

I've shortened the subsection on nuclear famine because a nuclear famine page with bulk of the content is currently under review. When the page is approved, I will link it to this page. Lina.singapore86 (talk) 01:52, 15 September 2016 (UTC)lina

I have linked the page to nuclear famine Lina.singapore86 (talk) 17:41, 12 October 2016 (UTC)Lina

Minor edit to number and yield of weapons needed to cause a global catastrophe

I edited 'on the order of hundreds of weapons' to read '100 Hiroshima yield weapons' as the link at the end of that sentence clearly states it as such. It might also be worth editing that sentence further, as I recall that at least one of the studies has indicated that as few as 50 Hiroshima sized devices would be sufficient to cause a 10 year nuclear winter - the one that was published a couple years ago in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Anyone recall that one?23.91.131.234 (talk) 21:52, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Nuclear holocaust

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Nuclear holocaust's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "agu.org":

• From Nuclear winter: Fromm, M.; Stocks, B.; Servranckx, R.; et al. (2006). "Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter". Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union. 87 (52 Fall Meet. Suppl). Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union: Abstract U14A–04. Bibcode:2006AGUFM.U14A..04F. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• From Firestorm: Fromm, M.; Stocks, B.; Servranckx, R.; et al. (2006). "Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter". Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union. 87 (52 Fall Meet. Suppl). Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union: Abstract U14A–04. Bibcode:2006AGUFM.U14A..04F. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 03:53, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Intro - Nuclear war not so bad after all?

What's the idea about the introduction setting a distinct tone that Nuclear holocaust is impossible with a large number of uncited and speculative paragraphs, parts of which directly contradict what the subsections say?

It's like the intro has been rewritten by someone trying to build a case for why nuclear weapons arn't so bad after all.

91.186.71.3 (talk) 21:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC) Tor Pettersen

A nuclear holocaust, or any holocaust for that matter would be terrible, it would be the most terrible event in recorded human history. Words don't even come close to expressing how such a war, any war, is disgusting. Not to mention living with fallout would also be a major burden to say the least. However, the speculative obsession with "nuclear winter" in the article required balancing. So this was done, Professor Brian Martin who is referenced, and many other well know physicists and nuclear winter modelers themselves by the way, state, with logical evidence-based reasoning behind them - That global extinction is pretty much impossible with nuclear weapons.

Now, I understand that saying this may appear like you're getting the feeling that "war is not so bad after all", but I blame those exaggerating the already widely accepted and horrendousness deaths of probably 1-2 billion people for causing this state of affairs.

You know, it is a very peculiar thing that Brian Martin touches on in the article; how disarmment activists think that if there is a threat of global extinction, then and only then, would those pushing the metaphorical button think twice. Now apart from their exaggerations being an obvious case of politically motivated "reasoning". I have also found that many people, really the public at large kind of secretly want there to be this potential of extinction, as I've noticed people get a bit deflated when the evidence and models are all to the contrary. I find this a very peculiar thing that a psychologist could probably write a paper or two about, perhaps it is the desire to feel like our generation has the power to kill us all? Some round-about lust for the feeling of existential importance? I don't know what it is, but I do find it curious to say the least.

In any case, All the fantastical notions by the politically motivated disarmament activists are utter nonsense, they're really not realistic or based on a firm scientific foundation. Moreover, you could just as easily make the argument that a truly insanely murderous psychopath would want to push the button even more if they thought it would kill everyone, while on the other hand, they would be less likely to do so if it meant "only" 1-2 billion dead, but that's just like the speculation of the disarmament folks, and I really don't have time for that.

P.S The chances of a nuclear war are pretty small, sleep easy.

Boundarylayer (talk) 11:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

@Boundarylayer I agree that extinction seems extremely unlikely by current models, although finding strong sources is difficult since most scholarly sources don't choose to directly address the topic. You seem to go further than that and believe that nuclear winter is a myth, which may or may not be true but I'm seeing the weight of scholarship as believing, rightly or wrongly, that nuclear winter is likely. It sounds like you're arguing that these sources are illogical and wrong; I don't currently have any opinion on that, but by WP:NPOV we can't dismiss the current mainstream scientific view as "speculative". Rolf H Nelson (talk) 20:04, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Rolf h nelson You make sweeping edits to the page, yet even in your edit summary you acknowledge that you haven't bothered to look at the linked article that details all the debate. Nuclear winter#Criticism and debate.

You also seem to be laboring under the misconception that "nuclear winter", as it is described in the popular papers on the subject, by the very same exact disarmament activists that began pushing it in the 1980s, is somehow, widely accepted as "mainstream" or "true" in the climatology community, when it really is not.

Why do you make these assumptions? You certainly have a WP:POV here. Furthermore, I wonder why you aren't suspicious about how, if it were widely accepted like global warming is, why totally new, fresh, independent and young climatologists are not be publishing about "nuclear winter"?

From my years of reading, "nuclear winter", at least as it is described in the disarmament papers, is not accepted by very many climatologists and it definitely isn't accepted amongst nuclear weapons experts, city fire potential experts, cloud physicists, US-Russian politicians when they're deciding on which weapons to make etc. etc. You seem to think all this is unimportant and gloss over the glaring fact that all the "winter" papers are by the very same group of nuclear disarmament activists, activists who make no attempts to hide their activism. Yet, scientifically speaking, this group of 6 or so activists were wrong when they made predictions about the effects of the kuwait oil fires and since then, they have never made a fire-climate prediction that was accurate, ever. That's the scientific "fact" of the matter, indisputable reality. You don't think that's important? Indeed, Alan Robock(author of the newer "winter" papers) is also having his devastatingly cold volcanic winter model challenged by the fossil evidence, showing that there was no "massive global cooling", over at the Toba eruption controversy. So his models and general approach, is showing cracks to put it mildly.

Here's what other climatologists and previous nuclear winter modelers are now more recently saying, William R. Cotton Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, specialist in cloud physics modeling and co-creator of the highly influential, RAMS atmosphere model, had in the 1980s, worked on soot rain-out models and supported the predictions made by his own and other nuclear winter models, but has since reversed this position according to a book co-authored by him in 2007, stating that, amongst other systematically examined assumptions; far more rain out/wet deposition of soot will occur than is assumed in modern papers on the subject, he writes, "We must wait for a new generation of GCMs to be implemented to examine potential consequences quantitatively" and revealing that in his experience, working with others, "nuclear winter was largely politically motivated from the beginning".

Now if that isn't enough to give you pause, again as referenced in the page that was linked - nuclear winter#Criticism and debate. One of the many dubious and contentions assumptions that the nuclear winter activists make in their models, as elucidated by Lynn R. Anspaugh, is how they always choose the summer in the Northern Hemisphere as the start point in their models to produce the maximum soot lofting and therefore eventual winter/cooling effect. However it has been pointed out that if the firestorms occurred in the fall or winter months, when there is much less intense sunlight to loft soot into a stable region of the stratosphere, the magnitude of the cooling effect from the same number of firestorms as ignited in the summer models, would be negligible according to a January model run by Covey et al., and this is an issue even acknowledged by the activists when pressed on the subject. Stephen Schneider conceded in 1990, "a war in late fall or winter would have no appreciable [cooling] effect".

So even according to their assumption laden models, that handwavingly just assume firestorms would occur in modern cities there is ONLY a 50% chance(half the year) that their models can be right. This is according to their own models, and this is why no one takes "nuclear winter" seriously. It's a bed-time story to scare kids with, because in reality the models are based on far too many fantastical assumptions to ever be correct. We're in the fall now in the Northern Hemisphere, so according to the very same models and assumptions, a nuclear war between the US-Russia, would produce no appreciable nuclear winter effect. Let that sink in and remember, I'm not saying this, they are.

Moreover, I feel it is vital that we detail exactly what is, and what is not modeled in the "nuclear winter" papers, as anything else is doing a disservice to readers. My edits to the article labored to do just that, yet you have reverted the article back to a state that essentially promotes unsubstantiated opinion. The "nuclear winter" computer models never model a war, they ONLY model what would happen if 5 Tg or 150 Tg of soot got shot up into the air. You might think this difference is pedantic because you also assume such quantities of soot to be plausible, but I feel it is necessary to let readers know that nothing "nuclear" is actually modeled in the papers, as it is not an obvious fact to many. The authors of the papers just create the fictional backstory to this soot entering the air is from a nuclear war but by their own admission, they actually have no evidence to stand on for that suggestion, they merely try and convince readers that such a thing is plausible, by essentially saying "hiroshima" a bunch of times, yet no such measurements of the amount of soot that reached the stratosphere were made after Hiroshima. Nor have any detailed cloud physics models been done on that. So it is a number picked out of the air. By the way, you do know that Nagasaki didn't firstorm, "despite" being hit with a more powerful bomb, right?

I do also hope you're aware that the "nuclear winter" models don't actually model anything "nuclear", you know that right? Tell me, you have done a careful reading of one?

Here's some references for you. As nuclear devices need not be involved in the ignition of a firestorm, the term "nuclear winter" is a common misnomer. This is due to, in greatest part, the vast majority of published papers stating, without qualitative justification, that nuclear explosions are the cause of the modeled firestorm effects. The only phenomenon that is scrutinized and computer modeled in the nuclear winter papers is the climate forcing agent of firestorm-soot, a product which can be ignited and formed by a myriad of other, more common, means. Although rarely discussed, the proponents of the hypothesis do state that the same "nuclear winter" effect would occur if 100 conventionally lit firestorms were ignited.

To summarize, according to their own models and statements, we can satisfy all the inputs to their modeled "nuclear winter", without any nuclear war or war of any kind. Yet as Seitz brings up on his paper that uses Siberian fires of the early 1900s as an analogy, no "winter" has ever happened naturally, and these were fires that burned the equivalent of the size of the entire Island of Jamaica. Making "hiroshima" or even 100 "hiroshima's" look like a bonfire in comparison. 100+ lightning-ignited wildfire-firestorms have most definitely occurred millions of times in world history and none of the predicted massive cooling was ever observed, some miniscule or fractional and transitory cooling is observed from firestorms, as detailed in the nuclear winter article but nothing on the order of degrees celsius. This is the reality of "nuclear winter". It is an exaggeration to the extreme. If you accept its dubious rationale, then I ask you, why stop there? Why not say that nuclear war would make "Godzilla? As, a double-stranded DNA break on a lizard is possible and mutations are possible...so you never know? You see? That's exactly how "nuclear winter" works, building assumption upon assumption to exceedingly far-fetched levels of improbability, and just like "soot/nuclear-winter", naturally high radiation areas should have made a "Godzilla" by now if it were in any way a realistic possibility, and yet it hasn't and never will - the reality of biology steps in and shuts down such half-baked ideas, as unsurprisingly, they're based on an incomplete understanding of how DNA works. The same goes for Firestorm/"nuclear" winter.

Boundarylayer (talk) 06:13, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

'You also seem to be laboring under the misconception that "nuclear winter", as it is described in the popular papers on the subject, by the very same exact disarmament activists that began pushing it in the 1980s, is somehow, widely accepted as "mainstream" or "true" in the climatology community, when it really is not.' I'm not sure what you mean by "as it is described in the popular papers". I would say that I believe that nuclear winter is accepted as mainstream in the scientific community. Doing a google scholar search for papers written this decade, the first four on-topic papers accept, implicitly or explictly, nuclear winter: [2] [3] [4] [5]. Are they right? I don't know. But it's hardly WP:PATENT nonsense. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:18, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

You're not sure what I mean when I write - nuclear winter is not widely accepted by the broader climatology community, at least "as it is described in the popular papers"? Ok. I'll attempt to elaborate once more. While it is acknowledged that soot in the air will block out the sun, as that is rather elemental reasoning there, it is not accepted that this soot(if it actually gets to the stratosphere) will remain there for longer than a month or so. As no experimental evidence supports the "years-decades of cooling" that the popular papers on the winter hypothesis advocate. Indeed, what they advocate goes against what is observed in reality after, much larger, forest firestorms.

Their lack of support from, actual reality, made Peter V. Hobbs state, that the inputs into the computer games/"nuclear winter models" are "overblown" nonsense here. Similarly William R. Cotton a previous modeler of the nonsense has defected from it and revealed it is indeed exaggerated and not only that, but he reveals that the entire thing was concocted largely for "political" reasons from the beginning. As discussed here Nuclear winter#Criticism and debate. It's all well referenced if you had taken the time to actually look.

You see the difference? I'll use an anology, we all accept carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, however if the only models [in the public domain] that looked at its heating effects were returning absurd heating rates of a bazillion degrees celsius from a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, the climatologist community would likewise not dismiss the inherent notion of heating, they'd merely dismiss the model/paper results on the heating. You understand my point now? So again I ask you, please provide a reference for your assumption that the nuclear winter inputs and conclusions in the popular papers on the subject, are widely accepted by the climatology community. Everyone with a scientific education that I've ever read on the subject, everyone, states that the inputs into the nuclear models are and always have been (1)unrealistic, (2) based on wild unsubstantiated assumptions and (3) intent to get the cooling result the group behind it, want to achieve, i.e catastrophic cooling.

I look forward to you finding a single reputable scientific organization or group who is not critical of the nuclear winter papers, and that is before we even get into the fact that modern cities wouldn't firestorm i.e no knowledgeable military really takes nuclear winter seriously.

15:09, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

"Please provide a reference for your assumption that the nuclear winter inputs and conclusions in the popular papers on the subject, are widely accepted by the climatology community." The relevant contention is much more narrow. I maintain that nuclear winter is a mainstream view in the scientific community. I don't have a particular number for what constitutes nuclear winter, but Robock 2007 looks like -5 C is sufficient to label a nuclear winter. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:06, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

What? "You maintain...". I'm sorry Rolf H Nelson, but your opinion is neither here nor there and so this smacks of nothing but your WP:POV. The fact of the matter is, that I've provided two independent scientists, one is even a former advocate of the "nuclear winter" models, and you should keep in mind, Cotton created the highly influential RAMS computer model, so he knows a little more than just a thing or two about modeling clouds. Moreover Cotton has first hand experience "working" with the winter advocates, he used to support the models back in the 80s. Both of these men have come out exposing the winter advocates, to be essentially pushing patent nonsense/exaggerations to absurd levels, and in Cotton's experience, the reason why they're doing it, is for "political" purposes. Robock, who is the lead author of the most recent winter papers, has also been shown to routinely publish catastrophic climate cooling results that do not bear any semblance to reality. His volcanic winter models for example, are being shown to be grossly in error in recent years. If you take a look at the Toba eruption article, where data is emerging that none of his claimed global "catastrophic" climate effects occurred, agriculture continued in Africa just fine. So you should now ask yourself, has Robock ever made a cooling model that was to later be proven accurate and to be corroborated by supporting evidence? I haven't looked very hard but I did not find a single case of that being so. Perhaps though you'll have more luck? Just find 1 example for me, not a hindcasting example, a future prediction where he has been in the right ball-park.

In sum however, you have not provided a single reputable independent organization or figure that has come out in support of Robock's or TTAPS's figures. You may not like accepting this fact for whatever reason, but it is undeniable that everyone comes out criticizing the "nuclear winter" papers. That's before we even get to the elephant in the room which is that the US military clearly don't take "nuclear winter"(as it appears in the advocacy papers) seriously and neither do the Russians and for good reason. Go ask them or interpret their warhead selections as others have done to see if they take the psuedo "science" seriously. The proof-is-in-the-pudding is it not?

I will be reverting the article back if you have nothing to add but further opinion. Speaking of, please remember that the reversion will of course discuss Robock's paper as it did before, but it will do so in direct scientific terms. Specifically we will discuss that his models begin by assuming X amount of soot has found its way into the stratosphere in the summer months and then he merely computes the following climatic effects. He, importantly, does not model any nuclear strikes, nor does he analyse cities to see if they'd firestorm, nor does he even model the clouds that he assumes will lift this soot. All this is conveniently glossed over by Robock and instead his models begin by assuming X amount of soot is in the stratosphere. Now, while you might enjoy his engrossing tale of a back-story about "hiroshima's" and other such large hand-waving distractions, the fact of the matter is that nothing in his computer model deals with a nuclear war, nor does his computer model engage in anything "nuclear" at all. Readers need to be keenly aware of this. As it is not initially apparent to many readers on their first reading. They see "nuclear winter" and immediately assume the models include analysis of "nuclear attacks on cities" when they do anything but.

As ever, please correct me if you think I'm wrong. It's not like I've spent years reading everything I could find on the subject or anything.

Boundarylayer (talk) 01:35, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like we're talking past one another. As I said: "I would say that I believe that nuclear winter is accepted as mainstream in the scientific community. Doing a google scholar search for papers written this decade, the first four on-topic papers accept, implicitly or explictly, nuclear winter." Since there's no WP:CONSENSUS for your changes yet, feel free to escalate by appropriate dispute resolution channels if you still wish to make these changes; I remain opposed to them. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 04:37, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

This is an old topic, but the bad reasoning shown here made my hairs stand. Linked are four papers from "a google scholar search for papers written this decade" on the topic. At least two of these papers are from the same author (Alan Robock), the fourth paper is not a scientific paper but concerns security considerations (with 'helpful feedback' by Robock) and the first paper cannot be verified, because the link is incorrect. Citing a bunch of papers from the same author does not suggest mainstream acceptance. The same problem exists for the "Nuclear Winter" section of the article in general. All sources supporting the idea of a nuclear winter are either (co-)authored by Alan Robock or Owen Toon, sometimes both, or are second hand sources citing Robock and/or Toon. 2001:638:A000:F000:131:188:6:14 (talk) 11:27, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Probably one of the four links went bad in the past six years. I could do another search, but if you're disqualifying "second hand sources citing Robock and/or Toon" as evidence that the scientific community believes in nuclear winter, then there's no point and we're at an impasse. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:38, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Nuclear winter section biased

@Boundarylayer: @Rolf h nelson: I was very surprised to see that the nuclear winter section is presented here as if it were an established fact when on the contrary it is extremely controversial. Even in the early days when it was supported by Carl Sagan and others, undoubtedly respectable, but it wasn't accepted by everyone recognizing the limitations of their models. Later on they used their models to predict the effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires and they did not behave as expected. William R. Cotton was originally in favour of Nuclear Winter but then later came down strongly against it. The whole thing has been wakened up again by the papers by Alan Robock which do, as the section says, model the effect of a small exchange of nuclear weapons. What that section doesn't explain is that his model starts with the atmosphere pre-loaded with soot right up to high in the atmosphere. The more recent modeling of the effects of firestorms in cities do not support this distribution of soot. It's basically a case of garbage in garbage out. If you start your model with large volumes of soot high in the atmosphere then everyone agrees you'd end up with a nuclear winter - but that's the very point that is at controversy, whether that happens. The thing that changed scientific opinion after the Kuwaiti oil fires was the realization that their soot formation models were incorrect. Not so much was produced, it didn't loft so high, and much of it soon rains out. The Kuwaiti oil fires did cool down a small area of the Gulf region for a short while. Also there are no nuclear winter type effects from the many wildfires every year, as William Cotton points out, and modern cities wouldn't form such intense fire storms anyway with the widespread use of more fire resistant buildings.

The whole thing is extremely controversial, if not perhaps even verging on junk science because of the way it preloads the model with soot and does not highlight this or explain in detail why they do that.

By presenting the section as it is in this article Wikipedia is also contradicting itself. Normally you'd expect a short summary like this to summarize the much longer Nuclear Winter article. But it instead ploughs its own independent furrow. That article has a long criticism section see Criticism and debate. I think that it urgently needs to be fixed - to explain to the reader that the earlier nuclear winter idea is pretty much regarded as disproved by most scientists with the exception of Alan Robock whose work is regarded by the others as extremely controversial. His motivation may well be political - not that it is deception - he's surely sincere but there's the problem in this area that if you say nuclear war will not cause a nuclear winter you may seem to be downplaying its effects and encouraging nuclear war. Of course that's not true at all. Nuclear war is plenty awful enough without nuclear winter, and anyway the job is to write an encyclopedia not conduct an antinuclear campaign. And I write this as someone who has been a long time advocate of denuclearization - and I think for the UK that we should engage in unilateral disarmament - and set an example to other nations. I'm in the UK and I'm with Jeremy Corbyn and also the SNP on that. I voted for an independent Scotland and one of my top reasons is because if we become an independent Scotland we will give up nuclear weapons unilaterally and become the first country for a long time to do that. I am a strong advocate of a complete end to all nuclear weapons. But I also think the articles on nuclear winter should be accurate and that you shouldn't fight your political case by encouraging the disemmination of inaccurate information. Robert Walker (talk) 22:55, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

There is another factor also. Such material scares people who are afraid of human extinction. I am involved in debunking doomsday scenarios to help people, often young children and young adults, who get panic attacks and are sometimes suicidal because of fear of stories like this.

Now if it was accurate you just have to explain to them what the situation is and do what you can to help them cope with their fears and put it in context. But when it is inaccurate like this - then they are scared unnecessarily of something that just isn't true. Luckily I can point them in the direction of the criticism section of the Wikipedia nuclear winter article. Anyway that is also partly why I think it is a matter of urgency to be accurate particularly about anthing that could be an extinction / "Doomsday" scenario. Robert Walker (talk) 23:04, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

As I've stated, I have no objection to inclusion of well-sourced material that does not entail original research. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:32, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay I can do an edit when I have time. But I'd like to say that I think your response to @Boundarylayer: was uncalled for, it's like "bite the newbie" they provided high quality reliable sources that backed up everything they said. The same sources are used in Nuclear Winter so are clearly WP:RS and acceptable and back up what they say. It was never WP:OR. Robert Walker (talk) 14:06, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Robert Walker, some editors here use wikipedia to advance a political narrative, others wish to arm readers with knowledge, to let the readers know what the assumptions are and where are the current boundaries of what is [in the public domain]. Spelling out the chronology of development, or in other words the evolution of a concept, helps to put these things into context and once you have that, the understanding of these things just falls into place, more than most. If the criticism section of the nuclear winter article has helped children sleep at night, then I'll be sure to stare up at the stars some night soon, when I can't sleep myself and smile to playing a distant part in helping with that.

I also have a (potentially classified) 2015 DTRA reference that explicitly states that nuclear winter isn't taken seriously by these fellows who's job it is, to spend massive quantities of time and money to define, model and prevent threats to the US...though by reading this wikipedia article, readers are coming away indoctrinated with the fabricated belief that criticism of nuclear winter is just some "partisan" right-wing conspiracy? Really, Is that so? Does everything have to be political? Scientists and editors who are politicizing science...well it is a dangerous trend to be watching. "Truth" is increasingly not based on objective reality and data but it seems increasingly based on how good of a persuasive salesman you are.

Boundarylayer (talk) 17:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

References

Doomsday clock

"Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has visualized how far the world is from a nuclear war."

Well, it hasn't given any reliable visualization, it's just some people's hypotheses based on how much progress has taken place in favor of or against nuclear warfare. Not sure how to rephrase this. Weegeeweeg (talk) 03:12, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Subsections on secondary effects of nuclear war

Given that the main loss of life resulting from global nuclear war might be due to secondary effects, such as nuclear winter, rather than being due to the nuclear blasts themselves, I will try adding some additional subsections documenting this. These will go under the "Effects of nuclear war" section.

I just added a section on nuclear fallout. I have some text written on nuclear power plant breakdown as well, although it is missing references. Would you advice I post what I have now, or wait until I can add the references? Davearthurs (talk) 22:55, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Is there some way to make "some" meaningful? .0001 percent is some, so is 99.9999

Article states (without source)"Under such a scenario, some of the Earth is made uninhabitable by nuclear warfare in future world wars." Some? Is there SOME way to make that sentence mean something significant? "Some of the earth" could be one village in Afghanistan or continents. (PeacePeace (talk) 00:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC))

Holocaust vs. genocide

Consider transitioning from using the word "holocaust" to calling this "nuclear genocide" since "holocaust" is the specific killing of Jews in WWII and genocide has a similar but wider meaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baulius (talk • contribs) 21:21, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

"holocaust" has a broad definition, in which this is included. "Holocaust" (capital h.) refers to The Holocaust DarmaniLink (talk) 13:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2022 and 14 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lukebbaldwin (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Lukebbaldwin (talk) 19:43, 13 December 2022 (UTC)