[POLL] Anthropogenic Epoch?

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Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army as part of the Manhattan Project at the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.

That could happen if everyone got together.

There are an estimated 16,300 warheads in the world and about 57,505,693 square miles of land. Thus, approximately one warhead per 3,527 square miles of land area. I don't know whether that number includes tactical nuclear weapons -- if it does, then many of those would have far smaller areas of destruction.

In the unlikely event that all 16,300 warheads were used and were spread out to evenly coved all the landmasses of the Earth in the most efficient manner possible without overlapping each other, that would put a nuclear warhead on a grid about every 60 miles. While that would certainly cause enormous problems, I don't believe that would kill everyone on Earth.

And in a real attack, the warheads would not be targeted in such a manner. There would be many areas in the world that would be relatively unscathed. Also, not all nuclear bombs would be likely to be used and of those that were used, some would be destroyed before reaching their targets.

Furthermore, (from memory from my Air Science classes) the Rand Corporation was commissioned in the 1960s to study US vs Soviet targeting. At the time, the Soviets concentrated on military targets while the US concentrated on population centers. It was determined that in spite of our overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons at that tie, we would lose because the Soviets would destroy our military capabilities while retaining theirs. Since then, we have supposedly changed our targeting to go for military targets rather than population centers.

So while it may be possible for a nuclear war to wipe out all human life on Earth, I seriously doubt that it is likely.

Nuclear WINTER would causes starvation even in areas not directly targeted by N devices.
Generations of extreme rates of cancer and birth defects ought also to be considered.

It is debatable how much nuclear winter we would actually see. It would cause severe hardship, but even at its worse, it woudn't be enough to wipe out mankind.

As for "extreme rates of cancer and birth defects", that would depend on your definition of "extreme". They would go up as you got nearer areas destroyed in a nuclear war, but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of mankind.