Now excuse me while I go cheer myself up with pictures of kitties.

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The effect of even a small nuclear exchange would have devastating effects on the global populace.

First of all, the effects of EMP would destroy most if not all of our electronics. No phone, no internet, no TV, no radio... The military has shielded communications, but that's it for the most part. Even your car is not going to start unless it was made before 1973 and doesn't have a chip starter. Most city water supplies would fail as well.

The damage from EMP is irreparable.

If your city wasn't near a blast site, well the satellites all got cooked anyway. So most of the shit you do own isn't going to do you much good.

Fallout from Chernobyl drifted around almost half the Earth. That was one nuclear disaster. Fallout from a small nuclear war would spread around the globe. The ozone would have severe damage that might not be repaired for thousands of years. Global warming wouldn't be a problem because sunlight would be drastically reduced for years as soot and smoke covered the globe. Nuclear winter. Agriculture is severely disrupted.

Facing scarcity of resources and severed trade capabilities, warfare and conflict explodes.

Did I forget to mention what happens when you have poor access to medical supplies and clear water? Most of the first world becomes the third world overnight.

You'll be lucky if a couple billion people aren't dead of either disease, famine or war within a decade.

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Google the amount of arable land in the world, then find out where the vast majority of our food is being produced.

There are more than enough nuclear weapons to easily scorch and irradiate that land.

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Hmm. I don't know. If there was a massive, all out nuke lovefest between the U.S, China and Russia? The skies would be almost pitch black for 20 years.

I wouldn't bet on the survival of much of anything. Don't forget, we gotta eat to survive. What are you going to eat if the food chain breaks down?

Interesting questions.

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"The damage from EMP is irreparable."

Um wrong, its only extremely annoying. And in truth its really unknown how much it would really effect us because devices you would think would fail, have in tests shown to be capable of surviving pretty severe EMP blasts.

"Fallout from Chernobyl drifted around almost half the Earth."

Not quite, and it was about as damaging as a day in the sun for 3/4ths of the range of its travel.

"Facing scarcity of resources and severed trade capabilities, warfare and conflict explodes.

Did I forget to mention what happens when you have poor access to medical supplies and clear water? Most of the first world becomes the third world overnight.

You'll be lucky if a couple billion people aren't dead of either disease, famine or war within a decade. "

But that would still not wipe out the human population. Heck the third world would likely thrive as it will do little to change their way of life. It would suck for us, but people forget that electricity and even common running treated water has only existed as we know it now for roughly 100 years. Integrated circuits that would be effected by a EMP pulse even less time.

While all of those sick before the war (ie people with diabetes or other diseases requiring daily or even monthly medical treatment) will die within days or weeks, healthy people outside of the lethal dose range for radiation will probably survive though I am not sure I would want to be one of them.

And while radiation will seriously effect procreation, eventually humans will be able to reproduce at the same level they have in the past.

Life will go on, it just wont be like it is today, but more like the 17-19th centuries.

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No.

I think we've agreed to disagree. Most of the global populace no longer knows how to survive without the infrastructure that is in place.

Katrina showed what happens when that thin veil of civilization is pulled away. You both have very very unrealistic notions of what happens when things fall apart. People don't have a town meeting and start planning on how to survive. It's not like an SM Stirling novel. People kill each other. People set things on fire. People loot. And then people die.

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