No Sino-Soviet nuclear war? Well then I would probably exist!
But I don't *disappears in a puff of causality*
But I don't *disappears in a puff of causality*
DBWI: No Sino-Russian nuclear war in 89
- Thread starter Historyman 14
- Start date
Otis R. Needleman
Banned
Fall 1989-Fall 1990 was pretty rough, wherever you lived. But in many places it was utterly hosed.
While US forces in South Korea weren't hit, they got a good deal of fallout, as did nearly the entire Korean Peninsula and a hunk of Japan. Some cases of radiation sickness were treated at San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center.
The fallout was going to be a bit of a mixed blessing for South Korea. A lot of the rice harvest, as well as other crops, was lost due to contamination. Between purchases and aid shipments primarily from the USA and Australia, plus stored grains and severe rationing, South Korea squeaked by until the next harvest. North Korea lost damned near all their crops, and with China gone as a food supplier, they were going to be fucked. While the North Koreans ate rice, they also tended to eat a good deal of corn and barley. During the course of a very quiet little meeting in Geneva, the USA told the North Koreans they would provide corn, barley, and soybeans, either from the US or other countries, to keep their people alive - AFTER the war reserve grains had been consumed. The USA could also supply seeds for the next year's planting, too. In return, North Korea was going to behave. No more vicious rhetoric. No raids, kidnappings, etc. OR ELSE. The USA pointed out that neither China nor the USSR was around to support them any more, and if North Korea started any shit they might get what the Chinese and Soviets just got done giving each other. The North Koreans agreed. Cuba got pretty much the same deal. Fidel shut up and let up on his people.
Within 24 hours we had computer projections as to expected levels of fallout in the US and Canada over the next few months. Thankfully, the jet stream would stay north until near the start of winter, so the worst fallout was going to hit northern Canada. Nevertheless, President Bush issued an executive order telling all farmers in the northern tier of US states to get their corn, soybean, barley, hay, and any other crops potentially affected by fallout harvested immediately, or at the first possible moment when ripened. Keep all farm animals under shelter or send them to market. Dealers and processors were to maintain prices and surge to get the grain into silos or shipped, and for food animals to be slaughtered, frozen, canned, or otherwise prepared without delay. The food was going to be needed very, very badly.
There was food rationing in the USA due to the need to help so many overseas. Limits were reasonable, but junk food was very scarce. Grains, potatoes, and oils were needed to feed others. Chocolate - at least American-made chocolate - was in good supply. Americans had enough to eat and were damned grateful for it.
My wife and I did our Christmas shopping for the kids the first weekend after the war, realizing if we didn't get any toys/electronics normally sourced from China/Japan/Korea/Hong Kong now, we probably wouldn't be getting them for some time, and in the case of China, maybe never.
The Southern Hemisphere came through in a big way. Brazil shipped huge quantities of grain and sugar. Argentina sent meat and grain. Australia sent meat, fruits, rice, sugar, wheat and other grains. Vietnam and Thailand contributed rice. Even at that, millions went short and millions, primarily in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, starved to death. The need was simply too great.
While US forces in South Korea weren't hit, they got a good deal of fallout, as did nearly the entire Korean Peninsula and a hunk of Japan. Some cases of radiation sickness were treated at San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center.
The fallout was going to be a bit of a mixed blessing for South Korea. A lot of the rice harvest, as well as other crops, was lost due to contamination. Between purchases and aid shipments primarily from the USA and Australia, plus stored grains and severe rationing, South Korea squeaked by until the next harvest. North Korea lost damned near all their crops, and with China gone as a food supplier, they were going to be fucked. While the North Koreans ate rice, they also tended to eat a good deal of corn and barley. During the course of a very quiet little meeting in Geneva, the USA told the North Koreans they would provide corn, barley, and soybeans, either from the US or other countries, to keep their people alive - AFTER the war reserve grains had been consumed. The USA could also supply seeds for the next year's planting, too. In return, North Korea was going to behave. No more vicious rhetoric. No raids, kidnappings, etc. OR ELSE. The USA pointed out that neither China nor the USSR was around to support them any more, and if North Korea started any shit they might get what the Chinese and Soviets just got done giving each other. The North Koreans agreed. Cuba got pretty much the same deal. Fidel shut up and let up on his people.
Within 24 hours we had computer projections as to expected levels of fallout in the US and Canada over the next few months. Thankfully, the jet stream would stay north until near the start of winter, so the worst fallout was going to hit northern Canada. Nevertheless, President Bush issued an executive order telling all farmers in the northern tier of US states to get their corn, soybean, barley, hay, and any other crops potentially affected by fallout harvested immediately, or at the first possible moment when ripened. Keep all farm animals under shelter or send them to market. Dealers and processors were to maintain prices and surge to get the grain into silos or shipped, and for food animals to be slaughtered, frozen, canned, or otherwise prepared without delay. The food was going to be needed very, very badly.
There was food rationing in the USA due to the need to help so many overseas. Limits were reasonable, but junk food was very scarce. Grains, potatoes, and oils were needed to feed others. Chocolate - at least American-made chocolate - was in good supply. Americans had enough to eat and were damned grateful for it.
My wife and I did our Christmas shopping for the kids the first weekend after the war, realizing if we didn't get any toys/electronics normally sourced from China/Japan/Korea/Hong Kong now, we probably wouldn't be getting them for some time, and in the case of China, maybe never.
The Southern Hemisphere came through in a big way. Brazil shipped huge quantities of grain and sugar. Argentina sent meat and grain. Australia sent meat, fruits, rice, sugar, wheat and other grains. Vietnam and Thailand contributed rice. Even at that, millions went short and millions, primarily in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, starved to death. The need was simply too great.
Regarding the destruction of China, IIRC the Soviets used a "measured" strike of about 1500 warheads, maybe it was 2000. I think they wanted to show that they could make a basket case of the world's most populous country even with a fraction of their arsenal.
The hardest-hit areas were the industrial redoubts of the southwest in Sichuan province, the Yangtze river, Beijing, and of course all the nuclear facilities and virtually every airstrip in the country. A hundred million people were killed by direct fire alone, and the same number perished over the course of the following weeks. As if that wasn't bad, all four Horsemen came to visit the Middle Kingdom and by the end of it the country was set back at least a hundred years. Interestingly enough, were China still a single polity today (the ROC doesn't count because they only actually control Fujian, Zhejiang, and parts of Guangdong), it would likely still be the second-most populous after India. Somewhere between three hundred and five hundred millions is the estimate, but between all the anarchy and radiation it's honestly anyone's guess.
Another weird thing is that the most "stable" part of the country is Manchuria, I mean, the Soviet Republic of China, which was overrun by Soviet armor early on in the conflict and received "only" a dozen nukes.
The hardest-hit areas were the industrial redoubts of the southwest in Sichuan province, the Yangtze river, Beijing, and of course all the nuclear facilities and virtually every airstrip in the country. A hundred million people were killed by direct fire alone, and the same number perished over the course of the following weeks. As if that wasn't bad, all four Horsemen came to visit the Middle Kingdom and by the end of it the country was set back at least a hundred years. Interestingly enough, were China still a single polity today (the ROC doesn't count because they only actually control Fujian, Zhejiang, and parts of Guangdong), it would likely still be the second-most populous after India. Somewhere between three hundred and five hundred millions is the estimate, but between all the anarchy and radiation it's honestly anyone's guess.
Another weird thing is that the most "stable" part of the country is Manchuria, I mean, the Soviet Republic of China, which was overrun by Soviet armor early on in the conflict and received "only" a dozen nukes.
OOC: I'd agree about hundreds of hits in the right places taking out the USSR. But if "only" a handful of nukes get through and actually explode, all that'll happen is that the country will go into WW2 mode and you can kiss any sort of reform goodbye unless it's through civil war, which seems to have been the case here.
It was a good thing my mother left Fuzhou before it was completely destroyed. I couldn't bare witness the shock and horror she receive when she was on that refugee boat off of eastern China heading towards the United States, watching the television at exactly 1500, staring at an aerial view of a mushroom cloud on top of Shanghai. Her mouth mumbled and shook, her eyes opened further out, and her hands perspired out of control. It was beyond her to image the family she left behind. The pure horrors of it was overwhelming.
My mother was a woman of infinite numbers. She was full of integers and equations and all sorts of arithmetic calculations that I would never fully understand, even if I grew up with her as my mother, whom was now a Pre-Calculus Teacher in my high school.
When she was in China, she teached the uneducated people of her part of town. Fuzhou isn't much to look at. But the culture, before "The Fall", was rich in quality and historical beauty that I could never fully grasp. My mother would stare at the east and wonders her life back in the Far East before "The Fall".
And the love for her home country was great. She would always ramble about how, "The people were always smiling at you and would greet at you no matter if your just some random bloke off the street with a hoodie on and a hand on your suspicious-looking pocket." I just rolled my eyes, knowing the exaggeration from her tone, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to visit China before "The Fall".
In that summer of 1989, my mother was going to Shanghai to visit a friend via car. It was exactly 900 when traffic started to pick up on the highway leading to the outskirts of the city. Cars were hooting at you, screams were heard, babies were crying out of no reason, people waving or flicking other people off, and all sorts of traffic-like conditions. My mother was sweating and panting, too, as she waved her hand on her herself trying to cool on this very humid day. It didn't help with all the carbon dioxide from the large traffic of automobiles queuing on the highway, releasing heat blasts on the ground. It was so painfully hot, that she could've took herself out of the car and walked straight to Shanghai, screaming and bashing her way out of angry automotive drivers.
When my mother started hooting along with the rest of the populous, she opened the radio, hoping it would at least bring the tensions from all the outside noise down and keep her head straight. When the radio was turned on, her head stopped lounging against the wheel and her ears started to buzz. The radio was depicting another Soviet-Chinese border dispute and death threats between the two. Apparently it was another one of those communist propaganda against the so called "Soviet aggression".
At exactly 1023 in the morning, she started smashing against the wheel, hoping the sun would go away. Suddenly, a large explosion rocked her ears and a sudden burst of light blinded every single space of her peripheral vision. Her head banged against the seat whilst her car, and every car ahead of her, flipped backwards away from the exponentially growing dust cloud growing at an omni-directional projection. It was confusing afterwards. Her head bounced from the seat to the wheel and her car flipped back and forth like a sea saw. It was good luck that she had her seat belt with her and didn't take it off like most of the drivers, whom was exhausted from the hot and humid morning.
Within a few minutes, she gained consciousness again, looking straightforward ahead of her. She saw another car, except it was upside down. She looked around and noticed that her car was flipped upside down itself. She took off her seat belt and kicked the door out with all of her remaining energy. Looking around, she saw flipped cars, some of them burnt or on fire, and there were leaks of gasoline, ready to explode into aflame. Those that survived were either trapped inside their vehicles or confused by the devastating scene around them. The city that was known as Shanghai, was gone, replaced with an ever looming grey mushroom cloud ahead, casting a large ominous shadow towards her direction.
My mother didn't had time to react. People were screaming or trapped inside their vehicles. She, and many others, started to grab whatever survivors were left and left. My mother didn't know what happened next. It was all in a rush so fast. The next day, she was in an American cargo ship- which was converted into a refugee ship, heading eastwards to the west coast of the United States. My mother, looking at the taping of the mushroom cloud in Shanghai from CNN International, couldn't stop letting her tears were down her cheeks. She, amongst thousands of Chinese refugees in that cargo ship, were grieving in their own little way.
"You know what, son, when life suddenly pounds your gut like that, it really hurts. But you've got to understand how much of the pain you'll experienced. Try to see from that person's perspective when you talk to somewhat who experienced it," my mother would say sometimes when I did something naughty. I presumed it was just another moral story, but looking at her photo albums, her stories, and so many other memories, I couldn't help but feel the pain she had. My heart fell back and my eyes gave way to tears, I couldn't help but feel empathy to those that was lost during "The Fall". I just wish I knew how much she actually hurted so long ago...
My mother was a woman of infinite numbers. She was full of integers and equations and all sorts of arithmetic calculations that I would never fully understand, even if I grew up with her as my mother, whom was now a Pre-Calculus Teacher in my high school.
When she was in China, she teached the uneducated people of her part of town. Fuzhou isn't much to look at. But the culture, before "The Fall", was rich in quality and historical beauty that I could never fully grasp. My mother would stare at the east and wonders her life back in the Far East before "The Fall".
And the love for her home country was great. She would always ramble about how, "The people were always smiling at you and would greet at you no matter if your just some random bloke off the street with a hoodie on and a hand on your suspicious-looking pocket." I just rolled my eyes, knowing the exaggeration from her tone, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to visit China before "The Fall".
In that summer of 1989, my mother was going to Shanghai to visit a friend via car. It was exactly 900 when traffic started to pick up on the highway leading to the outskirts of the city. Cars were hooting at you, screams were heard, babies were crying out of no reason, people waving or flicking other people off, and all sorts of traffic-like conditions. My mother was sweating and panting, too, as she waved her hand on her herself trying to cool on this very humid day. It didn't help with all the carbon dioxide from the large traffic of automobiles queuing on the highway, releasing heat blasts on the ground. It was so painfully hot, that she could've took herself out of the car and walked straight to Shanghai, screaming and bashing her way out of angry automotive drivers.
When my mother started hooting along with the rest of the populous, she opened the radio, hoping it would at least bring the tensions from all the outside noise down and keep her head straight. When the radio was turned on, her head stopped lounging against the wheel and her ears started to buzz. The radio was depicting another Soviet-Chinese border dispute and death threats between the two. Apparently it was another one of those communist propaganda against the so called "Soviet aggression".
At exactly 1023 in the morning, she started smashing against the wheel, hoping the sun would go away. Suddenly, a large explosion rocked her ears and a sudden burst of light blinded every single space of her peripheral vision. Her head banged against the seat whilst her car, and every car ahead of her, flipped backwards away from the exponentially growing dust cloud growing at an omni-directional projection. It was confusing afterwards. Her head bounced from the seat to the wheel and her car flipped back and forth like a sea saw. It was good luck that she had her seat belt with her and didn't take it off like most of the drivers, whom was exhausted from the hot and humid morning.
Within a few minutes, she gained consciousness again, looking straightforward ahead of her. She saw another car, except it was upside down. She looked around and noticed that her car was flipped upside down itself. She took off her seat belt and kicked the door out with all of her remaining energy. Looking around, she saw flipped cars, some of them burnt or on fire, and there were leaks of gasoline, ready to explode into aflame. Those that survived were either trapped inside their vehicles or confused by the devastating scene around them. The city that was known as Shanghai, was gone, replaced with an ever looming grey mushroom cloud ahead, casting a large ominous shadow towards her direction.
My mother didn't had time to react. People were screaming or trapped inside their vehicles. She, and many others, started to grab whatever survivors were left and left. My mother didn't know what happened next. It was all in a rush so fast. The next day, she was in an American cargo ship- which was converted into a refugee ship, heading eastwards to the west coast of the United States. My mother, looking at the taping of the mushroom cloud in Shanghai from CNN International, couldn't stop letting her tears were down her cheeks. She, amongst thousands of Chinese refugees in that cargo ship, were grieving in their own little way.
"You know what, son, when life suddenly pounds your gut like that, it really hurts. But you've got to understand how much of the pain you'll experienced. Try to see from that person's perspective when you talk to somewhat who experienced it," my mother would say sometimes when I did something naughty. I presumed it was just another moral story, but looking at her photo albums, her stories, and so many other memories, I couldn't help but feel the pain she had. My heart fell back and my eyes gave way to tears, I couldn't help but feel empathy to those that was lost during "The Fall". I just wish I knew how much she actually hurted so long ago...
It's just so strange to walk around Australian cities now and hearing Japanese or Korean spoken quite a lot from the immigrants escaping the radiation fallout. Cities like Perth and Adelaide have new neighborhoods where Japanese or Korean are spoken a lot, and even the larger cities like Melbourne and Sydney now have sizable Japanese and Korean immigrant communities. Indeed, we're seeing a lot of Japanese and Korean companies transplanting their electronics factories to Australia--Sony and Panasonic now have large factories near Adelaide and Melbourne, and Samsung is about to open a big one in the same area, too.
Many could have gone to the USA, but the ever-present threat of fallout affecting food production for at least 20-30 years in North America mitigated against that emigration.
Many could have gone to the USA, but the ever-present threat of fallout affecting food production for at least 20-30 years in North America mitigated against that emigration.
San Francisco is now the second largest city in the United States, now that millions of Chinese and Japanese immigrants have resided there. New York exponentially exploded from the Russian and Eastern European populations, most of them are poor and went to manufacturing industries. The US is pretty much producing goods to the world now. The fall of the US value allowed American goods to be cheap in foreign markets but expensive to buy foreign goods here in the US. Pretty much most of the goods are "Made in America".
Because of the US turning its economy into a manufacturing-service industry and producing goods to the rest of the world, Western Europe and India becomes the policeman of the world. A terrorist attack in India by the Pakis in July 12, 1998 allowed India to pursue another war in the Middle East. The Western European Union put closer ties to India as they too were hit with a terrorist bombing (in London). Iran and a few Middle Eastern countries had good relations with the US during the Cold War era, but the relationships between Iran with India and the WEU slowly deteriorated.
EDIT: Besides, the US had to deal with the fallout, too. More so than the WEU and India since the US supplied the world with much of the grain and agricultural products. Meddling into foreign affairs, after what happened to the Soviet Union and China, is strictly limited amongst the US public especially with millions of Russian and Chinese refugees wanting no wars what so ever. The WEU had eastern European refugees, but half of those left from WEU to the US and Canada as they faced financial problems as a refugee. The US, used these immigrants, to increase its manufacturing industries and sell products around the remaining world.
[So basically ITTL the US is OTL China and the WEU and India the OTL USA]
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The most tragic bar none. In a few weeks, more people were killed than in both World Wars put together, and you could probably add in most of the other wars of the past century as well.
Being 4 years old and in NZ I can't honestly say I remember much about it, although my father did say it surprised him, he'd been expecting the war to be between the USSR and USA.
I do wonder what would have happened with Hong Kong, would a lot of people have left before the hand-back, or just a trickle?
This is going to sound very selfish, but if there were no Sino-Soviet nuclear exchange, I might not be here. MY parents were expats in Tokyo, and fled following the fallout-they actually while trying to get aboard an American transport!
But ho knows maybe my parents would have met some where else and
-The whole US industry declining might have continued what with China not begin destroyed, and Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ruined by fallout
-Hong Kong would have been handed over, rather than remaining in British hands.
But ho knows maybe my parents would have met some where else and
-The whole US industry declining might have continued what with China not begin destroyed, and Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ruined by fallout
-Hong Kong would have been handed over, rather than remaining in British hands.
What's with the role playing?
And as much as Australia is not the racist country it was (not that it was any stranger there), do you seriously believe that it would allow serious numbers of refugees?
And as much as Australia is not the racist country it was (not that it was any stranger there), do you seriously believe that it would allow serious numbers of refugees?
I feel bad for Reagan. He work so hard to end the Cold War, and the USSR, only to have Russia, and China blow each other up.
(OOC: I wounder what Amine, and Popular Culture look like in this world?)
(OOC: I wounder what Amine, and Popular Culture look like in this world?)
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What was once the PRC would probably have reached a population of at least a billion by the year 2000. Which is like three times as much China has nowadays.
Could China have been a good location of cheap labour? Could most of our electronics come from China instead of Latin America, India and (more recently) East Africa as in OTL? Like stated above a non war China would have had a huge population, enough to replace entire Latin America and East Africa!
Could China have been a good location of cheap labour? Could most of our electronics come from China instead of Latin America, India and (more recently) East Africa as in OTL? Like stated above a non war China would have had a huge population, enough to replace entire Latin America and East Africa!
The Australians had no choice because 1) there was a LOT of room to accommodate the immigrants from the Korean Peninsula and Japan and 2) the radiation fallout danger--unlike in North America--remains non-existent to very low. Indeed, many of these immigrants are now working in the much-expanded Australian agricultural industry, especially trying to fill in the loss of food production from China, the former Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR's, and parts of eastern Europe. The USA and Canada can't really help in food production until 2019 because the initial fallout patterns ruined the great wheat and corn fields in the Great Plains states and provinces during the course of 1990.
Otis R. Needleman
Banned
I'd say Los Angeles would be the largest city in the USA. SF hasn't any room for expansion; geographically it is very small. LA has lots of room for expansion.
I don't see Europe and India taking over from the USA as the world's policeman, but certainly helping. US armed forces overall were little affected by the war. No US bases or ships were attacked. Fallout affected most US bases in South Korea and some in Japan but the bases were decontaminated. The US Army had over 200,000 of its 771,000 troops in West Germany. The 1989 US military was about 50% larger, numbers of people-wise, than the 2014 military.
http://www.history.army.mil/books/DAHSUM/1989/CH7.htm
Otis R. Needleman
Banned
Just a heads up. In my earlier post I noted the jet stream kept the worst of the fallout away from most of the US/Canadian grain-producing areas. Northern parts of Canada were hardest hit. Even so, the world overall is living pretty lean during the 1989-1990 time frame, and millions starved to death.
OOC: Frankly the PRC would be burned utterly off the face of the earth if they nuked the Soviet Union no matter what the US goverment said.
China's stockpile of nukes was tiny compared to the U.S.S.R, their rockets were far less advanced & their launch sites were too easy for the Soviets to hit. Frankly the SU had a decent chance of a ''first-strike'' on China, even in 1989.
China's stockpile of nukes was tiny compared to the U.S.S.R, their rockets were far less advanced & their launch sites were too easy for the Soviets to hit. Frankly the SU had a decent chance of a ''first-strike'' on China, even in 1989.
Let me rephrase what I said.
Los Angeles is now the largest city in the United States, surpassing New York in 1997. Most of L.A.s population growth was due to Chinese and Japanese immigrants heading for work in the manufacturing field. But the manufacturing field isn't for just Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, too. Farmers from the Midwest, unemployed from the fallout, went straight to manufacturing instead. Australia, Brasil, and Argentina took on the load as the agricultural exporters whilst the US took the role as the manufacturing field, exporting dozens of goods whilst importing foodstuffs from Brasil and Argentina to make its products.
The Organisation of American States strengthened together. They need each other. South America exports food to North America and the rest of the world whilst the US exports manufactured goods to South America and the rest of the World. Overall, the Americas came closer together.
NATO was disbanded in 2001 when the US diplomats refuse to aid the WEU and India in engaging attacks in Iran. The so called "War on Terror" was not the war for the US. Drone strikes were killing off innocent Russian and Iranian refugees in Iran, displaced by fallout, and the US cannot engaged in any more blood bath. The US did participate in the War on Pakistan, but with little engagement.
The Andean Economic Agreement wouldn't exist, most likely. The Japanese diaspora in the Pacific were a game changer in South America and overhauled the declining local industries of those countries.
Peru, Bolivia and Chile would never be such centers of technological development in the absence of the Fires... which has another effect that might make our world and a non-Nuclear war one completely different: Lithium.
The nearby sources of lithium were quickly tapped and developed during The 90s, which lead to the first commercially successful electric car in the mid-00s.
No Fires -> No Japanese diaspora -> No Andean Boom -> No Lithium -> No electric cars -> No Lithium/Petroleum Economy.
Peru, Bolivia and Chile would never be such centers of technological development in the absence of the Fires... which has another effect that might make our world and a non-Nuclear war one completely different: Lithium.
The nearby sources of lithium were quickly tapped and developed during The 90s, which lead to the first commercially successful electric car in the mid-00s.
No Fires -> No Japanese diaspora -> No Andean Boom -> No Lithium -> No electric cars -> No Lithium/Petroleum Economy.
Last week I went to Hong Kong for a conference. Man that city is something. Every freaking street is quite literally a human traffic jam. When I left my hotel to meet someone at a restaurant just down the block, it took me five minutes to cover like 200 meters. It was hot as hell too, the whole place smelt of sweat and vegetable oil. Funnily enough, at night the situation does a 180 and everyone is indoors except the police. And the military. They take curfew really seriously there. Based on my personal experience with them, it's best not to go outside at night for any reason.
In 1990, Hong Kong had, IIRC, 4 million people. By a conservative estimate, that number has since doubled.
Next I want to visit Taiwan and after that, its mainland holdings. If Hong Kong is any indication, the Taiwanese are probably swamped in refugees as well. In fact most of them probably came from Hong Kong.
It's amazing seeing all the comments about fallout in this thread. While it's true that cancer levels did rise worldwide, and that places that got nuked received heavy doses, it was by no means the main killer, especially in the USSR, and generally its effects are overstated. The real culprit was the loss of infrastructure and, in China's case, a complete collapse of order. Even after the exchange, China as a whole could probably still grow enough food to support most of its population, but there was no means of transporting it, or of organizing such an effort. There was no means of systematically controlling disease outbreaks either, which probably added another hundred million to the death toll.
OOC: Nice narrative, Divergent.
In 1990, Hong Kong had, IIRC, 4 million people. By a conservative estimate, that number has since doubled.
Next I want to visit Taiwan and after that, its mainland holdings. If Hong Kong is any indication, the Taiwanese are probably swamped in refugees as well. In fact most of them probably came from Hong Kong.
It's amazing seeing all the comments about fallout in this thread. While it's true that cancer levels did rise worldwide, and that places that got nuked received heavy doses, it was by no means the main killer, especially in the USSR, and generally its effects are overstated. The real culprit was the loss of infrastructure and, in China's case, a complete collapse of order. Even after the exchange, China as a whole could probably still grow enough food to support most of its population, but there was no means of transporting it, or of organizing such an effort. There was no means of systematically controlling disease outbreaks either, which probably added another hundred million to the death toll.
Actually, China already had a billion people by 1985.
OOC: Nice narrative, Divergent.