How would Ireland fair in the event of Nuclear War?

K-9

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Remember watching that movie as a kid, around 1984 I think, and was scared you know what less about it.

It was a time of a lot of east west tension too.

The BBC did one around that time too that scared the bejaysus out of people.

At least with twitter and Facebook it would be nearly impossible to cover up a disaster like Chernobyll or Kyshtym:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster

RobertKK

The Tsar Bomba is fascinating for how destructive it is - many hundreds of miles away from detonation.
The Soviets wanted to test a 100MT nuclear bomb, but for the sake of the pilot's life they didn't and even with the 50MT bomb the pilot was lucky to make it away alive.
I read windows well over 500 miles away were smashed when it was exploded.
A lot of damage would be done if one of them was exploded over London, for example where I live in Kilkenny it is about 300 miles to London and 500 miles to Paris as a plane flies.
In reality as we all know, the consequences would be unknown and wind direction would concentrate fallout in areas subject to the wind coming from a nuclear explosion site.
We just have to hope that people are sensible, but then I was watching CNBC earlier and they talked about artificial intelligence, but said 'we are years away from AI having the intelligence to access the nuclear codes...'
Beware of Skynet...

Jawgap

K-9 wrote: »

The BBC did one around that time too that scared the bejaysus out of people.

At least with twitter and Facebook it would be nearly impossible to cover up a disaster like Chernobyll or Kyshtym:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster

If you want a 'good' read, I can recommend this......



.....read it, and at the end have a cup of tea and wonder how the fook are we not living on a smouldering radioactive cinder - it's only by luck and the grace of God! One conclusion to come from it is that someone like Putin probably has a much tighter grip on his nukes than Obama.

Harvey Normal

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

What weapon did you select?

Modern Russian warheads are much smaller and are being phased in across both land and sea platforms.

Where Liverpool nuked, Ireland would get some fallout, but not a devastating dose.

Yeh. It's not the Cold War. The USSR had tens of thousands of warheads then and the were running out of targets. Irish villages were targeted.

The economic collapse would be bad but infrastructure would survive

KingBrian2

While i believe it to be unlikely it certainly is not impossible with recent events worldwide the UK has left itself exposed to attack. If the US and UK support Israel against Iran this could ignite a nuclear war or if the US, UK and France attack North Korea then China could retaliate with a nuclear strike. Should NATO attack Syria this could easily cause a world war with Russia & China supporting their ally. Lest we forget an Islamic Pakistan could cause a regional nuclear war with India. The threat posed by Nukes has become a lot worse in recent years.

fixXxer

K-9 wrote: »

The BBC did one around that time too that scared the bejaysus out of people.

At least with twitter and Facebook it would be nearly impossible to cover up a disaster like Chernobyll or Kyshtym:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster

RTE did one where Sellafield had a melt down and blew up and there was a fallout cloud heading over the Irish Sea to us. It had news reports during it to make it look authentic. Of course, I come across this on the telly pissed as a fart after a night out. It was a pretty sobering few minutes until I realized it was a spoof.

Overheal

Sure head down to Powers Pub and wait for everything to blow over.

K-9

fixxxer wrote: »

RTE did one where Sellafield had a melt down and blew up and there was a fallout cloud heading over the Irish Sea to us. It had news reports during it to make it look authentic. Of course, I come across this on the telly pissed as a fart after a night out. It was a pretty sobering few minutes until I realized it was a spoof.

I think our national school teachers advice was close the windows and hide under benches, tables and beds.

In fairness, it was more comforting than Joe Jacobs iodine tablet fiasco. The Marian Finnucane interview is comedy gold, never gets old unlike the tablets that were never replaced!

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/jacobs-crisis-plan-took-the-biscuit-with-radio-listeners-26075392.html

Tabnabs

This is a pretty powerful demonstration of just how trigger happy nuclear nations are. Not point in having the bomb and not trying it out, just a little...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Overheal

RobertKK wrote: »

The Tsar Bomba is fascinating for how destructive it is - many hundreds of miles away from detonation.
The Soviets wanted to test a 100MT nuclear bomb, but for the sake of the pilot's life they didn't and even with the 50MT bomb the pilot was lucky to make it away alive.
I read windows well over 500 miles away were smashed when it was exploded.
A lot of damage would be done if one of them was exploded over London, for example where I live in Kilkenny it is about 300 miles to London and 500 miles to Paris as a plane flies.
In reality as we all know, the consequences would be unknown and wind direction would concentrate fallout in areas subject to the wind coming from a nuclear explosion site.
We just have to hope that people are sensible, but then I was watching CNBC earlier and they talked about artificial intelligence, but said 'we are years away from AI having the intelligence to access the nuclear codes...'
Beware of Skynet...

everytime I get on the subject of nukes I look at Tsar Bomba. Seismologists report the shockwaves rippled across the planet at least three times. From the test they also learned that a lot of the energy of such large bombs is wasted as thermal radiation out into space.

K-9

Tabnabs wrote: »

This is a pretty powerful demonstration of just how trigger happy nuclear nations are. Not point in having the bomb and not trying it out, just a little...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Indeed, poor ould Nevada and New Mexico were just guinea pigs.

Overheal

Zillah wrote: »

Feck.

Doesn't really calculate meteorology at all. Fallout would disperse across the globe, as in the case of Fukushima where airborne isotopes reached the united states within days.

Tony EH

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

If you want to see how quickly a First World country would return to the Stone Age, check out 'The Day After'. It's on YouTube.

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Remember watching that movie as a kid, around 1984 I think, and was scared you know what less about it.

It was a time of a lot of east west tension too.

K-9 wrote: »

The BBC did one around that time too that scared the bejaysus out of people.

The BBC one was called 'Threads' and it made/makes 'The Day After' look like an episode of 'Dallas'.

'Threads' is still shocking today, largely due to its no-nonsense approach to the subject. It's cold, hard and it doesn't have any of the trappings of its American counterpart.

The city hit in it is Sheffield, because it's an industrial centre, so the focus is there and it lends a real down to earth feel to the program. The people affected aren't some big names fresh out of some Hollywood film. They're regular Joe's and Josephine's.

alastair

The best part of 'Threads' was the comforting revelation that dentistry, in the form of fillings, will seemingly survive into the second generation post nuclear, post technology, apocalyptic world, intact.

TeaBagMania

alastair wrote: »

How would we fare?
We would win the nuclear war of course!

This is a great little country for winning the nuclear wars.

This, aint nobody gonna bomb the home of Guinness, everyone loves Guinness

cml387

The Tsar bomb was called that because it is a Russian epithet for elaborate and useless things that were made for the Tsar's amusement.
It was a strategically useless weapon (incidentally it's possible yield was 100 Mt but a final stage was replaced with lead) and as Overheal points out most of the blast radiated out into space.

However.
Surviving a worldwide nuclear exchange, were such a thing possible, would lead to a medieval existence with little food, and rule by warlords and survival of the fittest (read "The Road" for a good idea of the aftermath).
Perhaps the better question is "would it be worth surviving?".

Stasi 2.0

Jawgap wrote: »

It might be worth noting that the Strath Report in 1955 (which continusix 10 megaton nukes would be sufficient to knock the UK out

After the mid fifties both superpowers moved away from the concept of multi-megaton nukes (delivered mainly by aircraft) towards larger numbers of smaller weapons delivered by (as time went on) increasingly accurate missiles.

The Soviets at one point did test a 58 megaton bomb but this was mere cold war sabre rattling as such a weapon was impracticably large to be used in warfare. The original plan had been for 100 megatons until it was realised that the crew of the aircraft dropping it would have been consumed by the fireball.

o1s1n

Tony EH wrote: »

The BBC one was called 'Threads' and it made/makes 'The Day After' look like an episode of 'Dallas'.

'Threads' is still shocking today, largely due to its no-nonsense approach to the subject. It's cold, hard and it doesn't have any of the trappings of its American counterpart.

The city hit in it is Sheffield, because it's an industrial centre, so the focus is there and it lends a real down to earth feel to the program. The people affected aren't some big names fresh out of some Hollywood film. They're regular Joe's and Josephine's.

I was talking to my Mam about Threads a while ago and she was saying it was shown on the BBC a couple of months after I was born.

It really resonated with the pair of them and they were worried that they were after bringing a child into a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Pretty sobering stuff. I think subsequent generations of kids really don't understand the insane and quite possible impact of such a scenario.

Stasi 2.0

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

One thing I never understood..... how were Hiroshima and Nagasaki rebuilt? Surely the soil and atmosphere are toxic.t.

Most of the isotopes from a nuclear explosion while highly radioactive tend to have short half lives (days to weeks)* also the bombs used were primative devices of very low yield the reason so much damage was caused was the widespread of use of wood and even paper in much of the housing of the period and fire probably caused more damage\death than the initial blast There were concrete structures quite close to the centre which survived.

*That said topsoil and a lot of plants tends to have a freakish knack for soaking up and concetrating a lot of residual isotopes long after radiation levels elsewhere have dropped away. A small amount of residual contamination is still detectable in Hiroshima.

cml387

o1s1n wrote: »

I was talking to my Mam about Threads a while ago and she was saying it was shown on the BBC a couple of months after I was born.

It really resonated with the pair of them and they were worried that they were after bringing a child into a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Pretty sobering stuff. I think subsequent generations of kids really don't understand the insane and quite possible impact of such a scenario.

Anyone who hasn't should watch Threads. (It's not a date movie).

I can never here the theme music to BBC's "Tomorrow's World" now without associating it with the film.

The last few moments are still to me virtually unwatchable.

Tony EH

o1s1n wrote: »

I was talking to my Mam about Threads a while ago and she was saying it was shown on the BBC a couple of months after I was born.

It really resonated with the pair of them and they were worried that they were after bringing a child into a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Pretty sobering stuff. I think subsequent generations of kids really don't understand the insane and quite possible impact of such a scenario.

I was a kid when I first saw it and it scared the hell out of me. One of the few films I've seen that had that a real scare impact. Partly because it was so genuine and taking place in a completely believable environment. The decision of the producers to use Sheffield as the city of focus and the banality of the main characters lives (before the bombs fall) was genius.

'The Day After' always felt like a movie and a TV movie at that. But 'Threads' felt like some documentary from an alternative timeline.

'Threads' really did put the fear of a nuclear war in a lot of people's heads in a very significant way. The sheer devastation and lingering end meant something. Conventional bombing may destroy cities and is devastating in its own right, but a nuclear attack ends a civilization for generations and permanently if the attack is strong enough. Conventional warfare makes war on the current enemy. Nuclear war makes war on a nation decades after the bombs fall.

Oppenheimer really does have a lot to answer for and it's no wonder that him and the likes of Szilard became such outspoken critics of that type of warfare.

LordSutch

Captain Chaos wrote: »

If the UK Britain gets nuked then so do we. Look how the radiation leaking from Sellafield effects the east cost as it is. We're as good as instant death in a nuke war. May as well live in London.

How does that work then?

With the Irish sea, and the prevaling westerly winds, why would Ireland suffer so much?
Unless of course Holyhead or Llandudno was nuked, in which case that is too close for comfort.

Tony EH

Liverpool is just 130 miles away from the Irish coast. It's a major industrial hub and a major port. Bombed by the Germans during the war for that very reason.

It's certainly not beyond imagination that if Liverpool was hit, Ireland wouldn't be in a great position.

ED E

Jawgap wrote: »

Might also be worth noting that because the US deployed a significant number of ICBMs in hardened silos (where the Soviets tended to rely on above ground facilities) - it would have taken more than one Soviet warhead to neutralise one US missile mounted warhead - and that's only if the USSR could have mastered the necessary 'time-on-target' profile where a number of warheads arrive at the target at precisely the right time and detonate simultaneously to deliver enough power to penetrate the silo and destroy the missile.

Surely sequential direct/near direct hits would manage the job? Low alt detonation #1 to rip open the cupola and #2 to rip apart the weapon?

Overheal wrote: »

Sure head down to Powers Pub and wait for everything to blow over.

Shocking lack of likes on that!

Jawgap

ED E wrote: »

Surely sequential direct/near direct hits would manage the job? Low alt detonation #1 to rip open the cupola and #2 to rip apart the weapon?

....

The theory was that the first detonation would throw up such a cloud of dirt and debris that following MIRVs would have their guidance confused by the debris and if that didn't work, they'd be physically knocked off course by all the crap thrown up.

uck51js9zml2yt

If the UK gets nuked, we won't have to worry about it.

Stasi 2.0

LordSutch wrote: »

How does that work then?

With the Irish sea, and the prevaling westerly winds, why would Ireland suffer so much?
Unless of course Holyhead or Llandudno was nuked, in which case that is too close for comfort.

Some people here dont get the concept of "prevailing wind"

Yes the wind blows MAINLY from the west but that doesnt mean it blows from that direction ALL the time.

And thats leaving aside little matters like refugees, invasion, economic disruption, EMP, the nuclear winter followed by the nuclear summer.

Firefox11

Lawyer.02 wrote: »

Ive watched so many nuke movies i think i've scarred myself for life

The day after
On the beach
Testament
Threads
The war Game (1965 doco i highly recomend if you want a scare) for some reason got me the most

I was hoping maybe i was being over dramatic and thinking the worst would happen over here if the world went to bits... Obviously not.

You should watch the Channel 4 documentary about the Able Archer exercise, Pershing 2 in europe etc, in 1983 called '1983 - The Brink of Apocalypse' (can be found online). Chilling Stuff.

Timberrrrrrrr

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

What weapon did you select?

Modern Russian warheads are much smaller and are being phased in across both land and sea platforms.

Where Liverpool nuked, Ireland would get some fallout, but not a devastating dose.

Feck off you I have just moved to there :mad:

Overheal

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Feck off you I have just moved to there :mad:

Relax, the next time nukes are used they'll be used everywhere. Take comfort knowing that not just you but everyone you've ever known and care for will be dead also.