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When looking back on the Cold War,
those four decades of tension between the USA and USSR,
it's really surprising that we made it through it.
Both sides hated each other.
But we're too powerful to fight, knowing that it would lead to the end of everything.
(So, good job humanity, we didn't become radioactive monkeys.)
But its also scary how close we came,
by either political crisis, and on accident.
(No, "by accident" doesn't mean someone trips and falls on a red button.)
Simple computer glitches or miscommunication almost led to the end of the world.
Many times.
But through just luck, we kept rolling sixes and didn't blow ourselves up. Yay.
But what if in an alternate timeline,
we did?
The Cold War is the Cold War because it never got hot.
Generic viewer (Jimmy): "Wow, great observation, Cody, worth all those subs."
"Getting hot" for many means nuclear war, everyone dies. (Terminators take over)
It's more complex than that.
The story doesn't end when the buttons are pushed,
(and no, I'm not talking about that [Fallout by Interplay/Bethesda] ).
In this alternate timeline, sometime in the 20th century,
that day does come, and millions die.
The Cold War spanned roughly half of the 20th Century.
And in that time, a lot of change happened with nukes, politics, military technology, you get the point.
So the effects of a nuclear war depend entirely on what decade it takes place.
In this alternate timeline, it's 1983.
The Cold War has heated up once again when anti-communist, Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "empire of evil".
The Russians are paranoid.
The Kremlin fears that something terrible may be on the horizon.
On September 26, 1983,
the nuclear early warning system in a secret military base somewhere in the Soviet Union goes off.
Twice.
One of the spy satellites detects a launch of four incoming missiles from North America.
The day they all feared has come.
Without much thought, the Soviet command "retaliates" back, pressing the nuclear button.
Across Russia, the might of the Soviet nuclear arsenal is finally unleashed.
Hundreds of missiles rise out of silos and into the atmosphere, heading straight for the United States, and Western Europe.
At this time, the U.S. nuclear safety radar is going off too.
The Americans are stunned. "How could it be?"
Countless missiles are now less than an hour away from the United States.
Reagan gets the call that the Soviets have launched hundreds of missiles towards America and our allies.
He gives the go-ahead to retaliate, and the administration heads to the bunker.
You see, the U.S. never actually launched a missile in the first place.
It was an error from a Soviet spy satellite that it misread refracting light from the clouds for nuclear bombs.
But now, it was too late, the threat was real.
In our timeline,
there actually WAS a glitch,
the Soviet radar DID go off, twice, detecting perceived nuclear missiles from America.
Just one Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, trusted his instincts, instead of the technology.
And his decision alone in THAT moment prevented a nuclear war from obliterating humanity.
In this alternate timeline, Petrov simply isn't there.
The glitch happens.
And in a new moment of tension between the two states that the worst possible time...
...that glitch is taken seriously.
Both simply thought they were retaliating against the other,
and now, nuclear war was actually a reality.
So within the short time modern civilization has left,
what happens?
Within minutes, the first missiles strike unsuspecting European cities.
Short-range missiles and launchers fly across the borders of a divided Germany,
obliterating American and Soviet forces deployed there.
Across Britain and France, missiles are launched,
but not before London and Paris are annihilated just minutes later.
Don't think they're the only ones, literally so many nukes are launched, barely any city is left unaffected by the blast.
In minutes, most of Europe on BOTH sides of the Iron Curtain,
is a nuclear wasteland.
By the time Europe is nuked,
American nuclear missiles launched from Europe and submarines reach their destination in Russia.
The targets?
Officially the plan was Russian economic and military facilities.
But we all know in mutually assured destruction, no civilian populations are left untouched.
Many Russian military facilities were already by population centers.
So a nuke THERE, destroys the surrounding city.
Multiply this by dozens.
Meanwhile in the United States,
sirens like *this*, go off.
The population is absolutely confused, but it's too late.
One by one, missiles rain down from the sky,
and the entire Eastern and Western Seaboard erupts into pure white, blinding light.
*EAS System warns American TV viewers about the nukes, and tells them to find safety where they wouldn't be affected*
*the Western and Eastern thirds of America become atomic wastelands*
This war, World War III, whatever you call it,
last only a day, if even a few hours.
By the conclusion, the United States, Canada, all of Europe, Eastern(should be Western) Russia, populated sections of China, all of Japan and Korea,
are all left obliterated in nuclear hellfire.
Civilization isn't over though,
at least not yet.
In rural areas of Russia, Central Asia, and America,
small pockets of people could've survived,
most likely in Idaho or the Great Plains in America.
If you lived in Siberia, congratulations. You're alive.
But you're also in Siberia, so sorry.
Europe is just dead.
Everything SOUTH of the Equator though,
is pretty much left untouched.
They aren't ever nuked because there aren't any strategic areas to actually bomb.
(Take that as you may.)
As for those in the NORTHERN hemisphere,
nuclear winter is about to begin.
Viewer from earlier(Jimmy): "You could say nuclear winter is...
coming. (Game of Thrones reference?)
(My god, Jimmy, I hate you so much, you have no idea.)
For those unfamiliar,
nuclear winter is when ash and particles created from firestorms by the nuclear bomb
float into the atmosphere much like volcanic ash, and block out the sun.
In THIS scenario, thousands of bombs 10 times LARGER than Hiroshima are detonated all over the world.
The firestorms left are now hellscapes, the size of states.
If you survived the nuclear blast, imagine looking off into the distance,
and seeing an unending globe of fire.
The extent of this nuclear winter, however, depends entirely on just how many nukes are detonated.
True nuclear war, complete darkness, is only when really every nuke is detonated on Earth.
That's unlikely to happen.
According to Robert Lamb,
if a war occurred with around 12,000-18,000 nukes detonated,
like in this alternate scenario,
the SOUTHERN Hemisphere, though it faced harsh conditions, could end up fine.
After the War of 1983,
the world is forever split in two.
The Northern Hemisphere for a while would be a nuclear hellscape of raging winters and polluted water.
If the nuclear winter theory actually DID happen,
it would happen throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
Freezing temperatures kill all crops and livestock.
For the survivors, it's either migrate, or die.
You aren't going to have these "Fallout" band of raiders,
you'll just have cold, sad, barbarians.
So, sorry about that.
The Northern Hemisphere is now just a shadow in the history books.
Go SOUTH of the Equator, and the story changes.
It's not peachy,
climate becomes far harsher ,
seasons are either too hot because no ozone or, too cold because of nuclear ash,
but survivable.
Areas already vulnerable to famine like Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East,
simply can't survive this pressure.
Across the developing world, conflicts spark just a few weeks after the nukes dropped.
Revolutions, civil wars, genocides, you get the idea.
Dictators propped up by the USSR or the USA,
probably don't survive to 1984.
Very few countries actually survive.
At least their borders don't.
What we would think of as civilization is simply smaller.
Cities, villages, maybe even united city-states.
The reprocutions of the Northern War are now too much to bare and borders fall,
especially artificial African borders.
Much of the history of the Northern Hemisphere is largely destroyed.
Information in libraries before the internet, now forever lost to future generations.
As decades go by, the memories of these lands north of the Equator,
would fade as humanity rebuilt a new legacy.
It's likely 75-80% of humanity, 3 billion people,
would die from the war itself, the resulting winter in the north, and the famines throughout the World.
We'd never recover. It'd be a demographic shift of unimaginable scale.
But humanity would at least, survive.
This is simply, one scenario.
One that entirely depends on just the amount of nukes launched, and who actually gets affected.
We'll never truly know what would've happened if the Cold War got hot, and it's scary how easily this could've been our reality. But it's fun to theorize.
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This is Cody, of AlternateHistoryHub.