Friday, January 29, 2010

1980s Prediction : Australia Will Become A World Power...When The Rest Of The Planet Has Been Nuked

This report, from the late 1980s, examines the expected immediate and long-term results of a full scale thermonuclear war.

Here's the local angle :

* Australia is hit by at least 12 warheads (from China and Russia)

* More than 3 million Australians, almost a quarter of the population, is killed.

* 5 out of 6 of all the nuclear weapons in the world are launched, or detonated.

A year after the attacks :
Surviving Japanese military forces have waged attacks as far as Australia in search of food sources.
Okay, so there's far north skirmishes over bananas and pineapples, but compared to the blasted, ash-blown, rat dinner hell hole much of the rest of the world has become, by 2040 things are definitely looking up down under :
Some of the surviving nations have emerged by now as major powers, including Australia...
Yeah.

The full report is a Dr Strangelovian nuke 'em all armageddon-soaked grimorama, occasionally sparkled with a dash of "Yeah, it's bad, but not everybody dies" optimism.

I'm not saying it's a fun read, but it is interesting, particularly as a relic of the Cold War.