Nuclear Winter Recovery?

Depends on what you mean by recovery...

Nuclear winter isn't much different from an ice age caused by something else, and those happen regularly and can last pretty long, but vary greatly. Although a nuclear winter can only last a couple of years (or less) if the dust settles before serious glaciation happens.

I'm reviving this topic because I had some similar and related questions.

I'm looking for a nuclear disaster on a scale that can eliminate all human life, even those who have holed up in fallout shelters, presumably by starving them out due to the prolonged radioactive contamination and climate change.

If a nuclear apocalypse was that severe, how long would it take before the radiation dissipated to the point that agriculture was sustainable again? What plant and animal life would still remain?

RainyDayNinja said:

I'm reviving this topic because I had some similar and related questions.

I'm looking for a nuclear disaster on a scale that can eliminate all human life, even those who have holed up in fallout shelters, presumably by starving them out due to the prolonged radioactive contamination and climate change.

If a nuclear apocalypse was that severe, how long would it take before the radiation dissipated to the point that agriculture was sustainable again? What plant and animal life would still remain?

Click to expand...

Wiping out all living humans would pretty much require sterilizing the biosphere. Even worst-case height-of-Cold War projections never had that as an option. Destroying civilization, that's pretty easy. Killing the species isn't.

If that kind of thing happened, you've got much worse to worry about than radiation. As to what would remain, that would depend on what really happened. It wouldn't be a man-made event, in any case - think more like asteroid impact, gamma-ray burst, black hole hitting the sun, angry aliens launching RKVs, things of that nature.

RainyDayNinja said:

I'm reviving this topic because I had some similar and related questions.

I'm looking for a nuclear disaster on a scale that can eliminate all human life, even those who have holed up in fallout shelters, presumably by starving them out due to the prolonged radioactive contamination and climate change.

If a nuclear apocalypse was that severe, how long would it take before the radiation dissipated to the point that agriculture was sustainable again? What plant and animal life would still remain?

Click to expand...

I would think if it killed all human life it would kill all animal life too - their needs aren't too much different than ours. The deep sea stuff might make it, although the deep sea life feeds on scraps from the upper ocean levels, if all the life in the upper ocean levels dies due to radioactive contamination, then that leaves very little for the deep sea dwellers.

Insects also have a better chance to survive thanks to their exoskeleton, but once again we come to food shortage in the later years of nuclear fallout. If their are no new copses, flies have no where to lay their eggs. No new flies means spiders have nothing to catch in the webs. And then if it's a herbivore insect, the soil will be sterile for awhile so no new plants to munch on. I've heard some insects (some frogs too) can hibernate, although I'm not sure how long they can hibernate before they finally need to eat something. A few years probably won't cut it. And even when they come out of hibernation, if there's nothing to eat they'll still die.

As for plants, not sure. If the sun is blocked out, all life will depend on those seeds that make it, which would then depend on the expiration date on the seeds (no go if they expire before the sun comes out). Plus, the soil will be radioactive. The closer to ground zero, the worse off the soil will be.

The best survivors will be bacterium capable of forming cyst-like shells around themselves, like Anthrax - that stuff can last for ages.

ETA: I think your best bet, if you just wanna kill off humanity, is to have a biological disease that only targets humans and is highly contagious and deadly. Then gather up the survivors from that disaster and drop a nuke on them.

Got curious, so went googling about nuclear fallout survival and came across this article...

Manganese helps in repairing radiation damaged DNA


Nice to know there's hope for radiation sickness.

Look up information on Chernobyl and Hiroshima to get an idea of nuclear aftermath.