brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/05/83)
With all the talk of nuclear winter, I have begun to wonder what we would do if there were such a winter after a war. What could we do to stop it, considering that we could use just about any means at our disposal? Remember that (sad to say) the people who survive the war with any logistic and technological systems will be the military. We've done a lot to protect our nuclear arsenal. So the atmosphere is full of black dust, and the sun's light is getting blocked. The world is cooling. What would happen if we nuked the poles? I don't suggest that we would actually provide enough heat by doing this, but what we would do is evapourate great quantities of (albiet radioactive) water. This water would go into the upper atmosphere and form clouds. These clouds might perform two purposes. One would be to reflect heat back down to the Earth (aka greenhouse effect on Venus) but the other would be to condense around the grit in the air to cause it to come down in torrential rain. Almost a biblical flood, in fact. We all know how a good rain gets rid of smog etc. This might work here. With all the dust, things would be ripe for rain. Now, we'd erode the soil, and we'd muddy the oceans and wreck a lot of stuff, but at least we wouldn't freeze to death, along with everything else but the roaches and the spores. This is just idle speculation, of course. Any other ideas? -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 886-7304