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What would the world look like after a nuclear war?

Urge

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Im currently playing Fallout 3 - a awsome game where the main caracter is thrown out of his home in Vault 101, and have to fight his way through lots of mutated monsters, gangs of raiders and so on.

In Fallout 3, the nuclear war has lead to the creation of entirely new species, such a huge variety of giant insects, huge green orks that likes to eat people, gouls that are humans who looks like zombies (their skin falls of because of the intense radiation they where exposed to after the bombs fell) and some others. (The gouls are perhaps not a new species, As I have understood it, they dont get children, but they age much slower then normal people).

Huge insects will probably not happen after a nuclear war because the size of insects is limited by the weight of their outer-skeleton, and their way of breething through their "hull".

But what about the rest? Inn fallout, the forests and green stuff is gone. Is it certain that that would happen? In Cernobyl there is lots of forest and animals now that the humans are evacuated. Unnless a actual nuclear war covers the earth in much denser radiation than the Cernobyl accident did with Cernobyl, the post-war Earth might become greener - and not less green - then it is now (The big cities, and not the forests will be wiped out) perhaps with a two-headed, or two-tailed animal here and there.

Offcourse, a senario with higher radiation, less humans, but more animallife might also lead to the creation of entirely new species, perhaps forests of completly new plants (Giant mushroom forests or something?)

Has there been done anny serious scientific studies on how nuclear war would change the nature of Earth? Is the post-acopalyptic stereotype of desserts, mutated monsters and troubled human tribes based on anny kind of science?
 
huge green orks that likes to eat people,

Actually they are mutants. They used to be Humans but were experimented on using the Forced Evolutionary Virus which turned them into Mutants. They gather Humans up to be sent to a facility where they themselves are turned into Mutants.

You're playing the game now right? go check out vault 87 if you haven't already, it's part of the main quest.
 
Silly first-post perhaps, but a good start for searching.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l1293h6712752073/fulltext.pdf

The scientist here seem to agree that the effects on forests and animallife will be very severe as well. But the wildlife might recover more quickly then us humans? If a bunch of people spend a hundred years inn a fallout shelter (like in the fallout game) it might still be green outside when they open the door. If so, it will be more animal life that can mutate, and then perhaps strange new species.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/7906/790607.pdf

Aha
(quote from link):
"It is certain that
the radiation derived from a nuclear war
would cause mutations in surviving plants and
animals; it is possible that some of these mutations
might change the ecosystem in unpredicatble ways,
but this seems unlikely
"

So its unlikely that the world will be dominated by green goblins and mutated monsters after the war?

-----------

Oh, realy? I will definitly check out Vault 87:-)
 


Yeah there is a species of rat that thrives around Chernobyl and it is not bigger or meaner than any other species of rat. It was affected by radiation and it's nose it slightly longer than it's ancestors. Radiation that doesn't kill of a species seems to accelerate the evolution of that species, but they don't become sickly blood sucking mutants overnight. They just adapt faster or die from cancer or radiation poisoning.
 

Those are among the spookiest pictures I've ever seen. A cautionary reminder of where humanity will end up if we don't wise up to our more self destructive tendencies.

It is also inspiring to see how hardy nature really is.
 

Those are among the spookiest pictures I've ever seen. A cautionary reminder of where humanity will end up if we don't wise up to our more self destructive tendencies.

It is also inspiring to see how hardy nature really is.

Yeah I guess though the tragedy greatly outweighs it for me.
 
Those are among the spookiest pictures I've ever seen. A cautionary reminder of where humanity will end up if we don't wise up to our more self destructive tendencies.

It is also inspiring to see how hardy nature really is.

Yeah I guess though the tragedy greatly outweighs it for me.

The big tragedy is the Russian military caused it by wanting to see if they could take a commercial style reactor and try to make it generate material for Nuclear weapons. I guess the hundreds of nukes they already had at that point weren't enough.
 
World war two was a nuclear war, I visited Hiroshima in 1998, and except for the various monuments it has (physically) recovered, and looks like a normal Japanese city. I guess it depends on the size of, number of bombs, and how far the whole thing is from you.
 
By far and most, random mutations caused by radiation would not be beneficial to the creature. Propogation in the first place is dicey, let alone some amazing mutation that nets a faster, smarter, or somehow better species.

That being said, if the OP will kindly google "Nuclear Winter"...
 
It is also inspiring to see how hardy nature really is.

Yeah I guess though the tragedy greatly outweighs it for me.

The big tragedy is the Russian military caused it by wanting to see if they could take a commercial style reactor and try to make it generate material for Nuclear weapons. I guess the hundreds of nukes they already had at that point weren't enough.

It was human failure that caused reactor 4 to blow up, not any intereference from the military.
 
That was my understanding too. The melt-down / explosion happen during a test of the cooling system, where alarms were turned off to see if the engineers would catch it - the low water levels. Sorry, but where does the military come in?
 
The big tragedy is the Russian military caused it by wanting to see if they could take a commercial style reactor and try to make it generate material for Nuclear weapons. I guess the hundreds of nukes they already had at that point weren't enough.

Where did you get this misinformation?

It was a cruddy design, compounded by cruddy training.

The military didn't have one thing to do with the cause of the accident (although they were heavily involved with the cleanup).
 
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