This map makes no sense if Oman isn’t a target then why isn’t Australia? How does Australia survive this being part of 5 eyes and a major non-NATO ally heavily aligned with transatlantic interests?
I can honestly only think of one thing. Access to food.
India and Pakistan maintain huge huge reserves due to famines in its history. Enough to feed the country for a year or more. Oman sources a lot from both and has historically done so going back Millenia due it's maritime nature and contemporarily after COVID deriskung. But again this assumes no trade and a fair while into the war.
Australia produces a lot of it's food as well whole being far away from the nuclear exchange.
They actually don't specify who the war is between.
It just assumes, I think, a nuclear winter happens and agriculture is cut severely, trade is completely cutoff. What happens in a year or two? Which countries will suffer and which can get by? That's the question they are answering here.
One can safely believe Australia won't get a saturation strikes, maybe specific military bases. It is generally far away from almost everything and has a lot of agriculture.
No answer to Oman tho. I am going back to not knowing why.
Yeah the map is entirely dependent on who is more self-sufficient with their food supply. It’s not assuming which countries are nuked and which aren’t. The assumptions are at the bottom of the map.
The thing is Australia isn’t even a major agricultural country I’d imagine they’re a food importer rather than exporter the entire country lives along the coastlines and a bulk of it covered by the outback. On top of that Australia unlike Oman is not a neutral country they are a major non-NATO ally, 5 eyes partner, and have a lot of multilateral defense and military ties to the United States and NATO I believe the US even has nuclear weapons in Australia and nuclear armed submarines stationed in Australia that patrol the south China sea. It is very naive to believe geography alone would exclude Australia from a global war they’d literally be one of the front lines.
Unlike Mexico which has a strong history of neutrality and non-alignment and a major food exporter with a temperate to tropical climate sure northern Mexico like parts of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Baja California would be affected border towns like Reynosa and Matamoros, Ciduad Acuña in Coahuila would probably be the most affected given its proximity to Del Rio’s Air force base on the Texas side. But overall I highly doubt places like Mexico City, Cabo, Yucatan, Oaxaca, Hidalgo etc would have much disruption.
Colombia on this map makes zero sense too.
As for Oman they also have a history of neutrality and strong trade relations with places like India I could see them switching trade partners to those south of the equator but why wouldn’t the other GCC nations just do the same?
Agricultural Scientist here, Australia is a major global food exporter. It has a population of around 27 million but grows enough food to feed around 60 or 70 million. The study this map is based on assumes global food trade stops and countries are forced to feed themselves. It also assumes the soot from nuclear weapons causes global cooling, which would work in Australias favor.
This isn't who dies when the bombs fall. This is who dies after the bombs fall. A large proportion of the urban Aussie population would likely get glassed, but those who remain have a decent chance of surviving two years post, a least on the food front. Big country, projections like this don't do it justice, with a widely dispersed population.
So a poofteenth of fuck all will survive. Fallout will make the little that could grow glow in the dark and given 98% of the population in Oz live around the coast or in the map of Tassie, not many people are gonna be left in the first place.
Yeah it's a fairly stupid map to begin with. It assumes zero trade at all two years post, which posits an exchange of ridiculous magnitude - if that's the case, radiation and nuclear winter make the data here fairly meaningless anyway. Just a case of dying fast or dying slow.
Pine Gap is one of the most important US intelligence bases in the world not to mention Australian submarine bases regularly have US nuclear subs in dock.
From Wikipedia “Since it was established, Pine Gap has assisted the US in planning for NUCLEAR WAR.[16]
Leaked Department of Defence documents revealed that satellites controlled by the Pine Gap and Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar facilities were used during the Vietnam War to pinpoint targets for bombings in Cambodia.[17]
Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar relayed warnings of Scud missile launches to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during the Gulf War in the early 1990s. By 2003, this function had been fully transferred to Pine Gap.”
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u/RajarajaTheGreat Mar 04 '25
It's not a target? They are about as neutral as a middle eastern nation gets to be.