WI Cold War Went Nuclear?

[Queequeg]

After watching Threads, I started thinking about what the world would be like if the USSR and USA decided to go nuts and nuke each other?  Let's say something like the Threads scenario happens in the 80s and there is a several thousand megaton exchange between the two great powers. 

Do the USA, Europe and USSR get by far the brunt of it, leaving the then developing world several dozen times wealthier and more populace?  Or are they almost as fucked by environmental damage and subsequent crop failure and mass extinction as everyone else?  Does global population fall to early industrial levels, medieval levels, hunter-gatherer levels or do we eventually die out all together ?  Do central governments fall apart into quarreling, bickering city states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on earth? 

Also; Margaret Atwood brought talked a bit about this in Oryx and Crake; my first guess would be that almost no matter the detestation that some kind of civilization would return, but in that novel it is pointed out that almost all the world's easily accessible minerals have been mined and we need  modern technology to get at things as basic as iron.  Does this make a total return to modern standards of living (or at least a total technological revival) impossible?

[The Brain]

Malthus?

[Siege]

Very interesting scenario.

Who The Fuck Are You, again?

[PDH]

Very interesting scenario.

Who The Fuck Are You, again?

I think the original poster is Siegebreaker.

[DGuller]

Things would be shitty if Cold War went nuclear.

[Martinus]

Things would be shitty if Cold War went nuclear.

Source?

[alfred russel]

If the world collapsed, wouldn't there be an abundance of easily accessible minerals in the crap we've left behind?

[The Brain]

If the world collapsed, wouldn't there be an abundance of easily accessible minerals in the crap we've left behind?

No it magically disappears.

[Kleves]

I saw a documentary on this once. We'd all mutate into Japanese.

[CountDeMoney]

After watching Threads, I started thinking

Well see, there ya go.

[Josquius]

Argentina uber alles.

[Queequeg]

If the world collapsed, wouldn't there be an abundance of easily accessible minerals in the crap we've left behind?

Huge amounts of materials in the most important areas in the world would would be destroyed, along with presumably a lot of the most educated, important people in the world.  There could be a junk economy for along time, but it might not ever reach the point were it was capable of restarting the mining industry, especially as a lot of those areas would be the most thoroughly nuked precisely because of their extreme importance.

The first generation would presumably be able to salvage from broken items to fix less-broken ones, but eventually there would need to be more raw materials available, especially as population levels stabilize and eventually start growing again.

Probably the best case scenario would be something along the lines of Dr. Strangelove/Fallout; VIPs selected to live in strategic areas in half-converted mineshafts until the worst of the environmental effects are over, and then come out and use the rest of the surviving population for  manual labor.

[Ed Anger]

We have a mineshaft gap.

[Grey Fox]

As Kleves said, we would all be Japanese.

Not a fun perspective.

[Neil]

As Kleves said, we would all be Japanese.

Not a fun perspective.

Watashi wa shiroi desu.