the global effects of nuclear war

[glitterboy2098]

a useful little timeline i found. it plots out the rough result of a hypothetical nuclear war in the 1980's, and outlines the effects on a timeline out to 2040.

since in ATB, the Crash started with a killer virus, but escalated into global nuclear war, i figure this page would help give an idea of;
A) how much time had ot have passed since the crash
B) what kinds of "danger zones" players could encounter.

keep in mind though, this was written assuming the height of the nuclear arsenals. the ATB war could have been fought with smaller arsenals, or perhaps just "cleaner" ones.

edit: sorry, i had rushed to finish, and totally forgot the link. fixed now.

[CyCo]

Err, so where is this timeline??

[gordyzx9r]

Even with AtB2, I still prefer a little more thermo-nuclear post apocalypse and allot less virus.

[glitterboy2098]

the link is up now. sorry.

[BookWyrm]

It depends on the type of ATB2 campaign you're running. You can have a limited exchange of nukes and still cause a fairly decent collapse of the previous civilization without too much contamination.

Or, you can just caveat by saying: "The nuclear arsenals of the Old Human Empires were eventually updated with more efficient but less radioactive tactical devices--the radiation is still a problem in many areas, but it has a shorter lifespan than their predecessors. These, combined with more conventinal heavy explosives of the time, managed to still devastate their civilization but not seriously contaminate the lands and water supplies to cause we, the mutant inheiretors of the world, a problem."

As far as a timeline of ATB2, I'd say that it's somewhere near the end of the 21st century, begining of the 22nd, using the "Old American Empire" calendar.

[glitterboy2098]

personally i'd assume that the nuclear arsenals of the first world had been "cleaned up" alot, so less fallout, and that there were fewer nukes fired off than the scenario i linked to, since the cold war was over. heck, given the known advanced tech in the setting, they could have been lobbing laser induced fusion bombs. since the plutonium in the atomic bomb trigger is the main source of fallout, getting rid of it would clean them up alot, while actually increasing the yeilds. plus you could make things like nuetron bombs into "clean" weapons..

on the otherhand, i'd assume there were plenty of orbital kinetic strikes by all sides with space capability. simple re-entry vehicles that do damage from their mass and speed alone. much cleaner than a nuke, and while generally not as destructive in an area effect sense, you can afford to send up many more of these devices than you can nukes.