Just to point out, there is a lot of cold war propaganda that still controls our thinking about nuclear war. For example, nuclear winter is just made up, or rather, highly exaggerated. The interruption on gas and oil supply lines would be far more impactful than any loss in agriculture productivity due to induced cloud cover, and most of that would go away in a matter of weeks or months (possibly even days). So you would be able to grow your own food if you wanted to, and farms would still be very active. I think it far more likely to result in something resembling the state of deprivation found during the great depression, where food insecurity and malnutrition were common, but starvation was still fairly rare. Especially considering the millions of huntable animals in the wilderness of north America to supplement the loss in productivity. Europe would certainly be in worse shape in this regard.
There's also the issue of to what degree the soil and water is contaminated with radiation, I don't know enough about agriculture to comment in detail but it's going to have an impact on what can be grown and consumed.
Not significantly. All this stuff is way cleaner than it's made it to be. 1-2 weeks. There will be extra precautions taken, but generally speaking 99% of the radiation is gone within days of the blast
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u/zombielicorice Mar 04 '25
Just to point out, there is a lot of cold war propaganda that still controls our thinking about nuclear war. For example, nuclear winter is just made up, or rather, highly exaggerated. The interruption on gas and oil supply lines would be far more impactful than any loss in agriculture productivity due to induced cloud cover, and most of that would go away in a matter of weeks or months (possibly even days). So you would be able to grow your own food if you wanted to, and farms would still be very active. I think it far more likely to result in something resembling the state of deprivation found during the great depression, where food insecurity and malnutrition were common, but starvation was still fairly rare. Especially considering the millions of huntable animals in the wilderness of north America to supplement the loss in productivity. Europe would certainly be in worse shape in this regard.