Post
by Dr_Frodo » 21 Nov 2008, 17:15
Chernobyl was a reactor that had a catastrophic failure, essentially the casing for the reactor tore and blew the reaction matter all over the place, it was not a fission explosion that gives you the familiar mushroom cloud. In fact, any reactor wouldn't blow like a fission bomb, that's just an assumption many people make, sure, if you nuke a reactor the mass may add to the initial reaction, but it would be hardly noticeable.
A fission bomb is designed to cause the most damage, ether by initial short lived radiation burst, the 'vacuum' that the explosion (technically not an explosion, a reaction) and the obvious thing of incredible heat. Fission reactor are not designed to work the same and are designed to output a certain limit of thermal energy for prolonged periods of time. The words 'nuclear bomb' and 'nuclear reactor' don't mean that they work the same, mearly that splitting of atoms is in effect.
Then there's the fact it said 'nuclear winter' within the game, if you had a nuclear winter for even one year, it would kill pretty much most plant life on the surface, which would then cause species that depend on it directly to die (herbivores) followed by a total collapse of the ecosystem as food chains would cease to exist. Humans would be able to survive until the winter had passes using tinned food and artificial food, even resorting to refrigerating any dead animals they come across for food.
Sorry for the slightly in depth post, but some people confuse the two types of usage of fission assuming that they are the same, then ignore the fact of a nuclear winter.