Alex WellersteinVerified account

100 million prompt fatalities still leaves almost 99% of the world's population alive in the immediate aftermath 4/

I would not be surprised if an all out nuclear exchange in 1970 would have hit 10% of the world's population killed promptly. 5/

So my question, as @FrKadel anticipated upthread, is what do the next few weeks, months, years look like in Bangalore, Sao Paulo, Lagos, Dubai, Jakarta, Sydney, etc? 6/

I don't think the result "On The Beach", where the entire human race is extinct of radiation sickness within a few months. But it's not like you just reroute container ships and put on extra sunscreen either 7/

Credit to previous tweets from @profmusgrave and @AthertonKD for putting this question in my mind 8/

My sense is better modelling ended up showing the "nuclear winter" effect, while non-zero, is much less than the early, almost extinction-level predictions by Sagan et al 9/

I don't know if there's any full work on it yet but I think @wellerstein's entire ouevre circles this topic: nuclear war reads as a bright flash and a permanent end, but the reality of what happens is, outside blast zones, slower and more about like macroeconomics than that.