Aftermath of a massive nuclear exchange in 1988

[Straha]

presume that the third world war described in the linked scenario
happens: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html

How much would the world have rebuild by 2012, and most importantly
how would the nature of this rebuilding differ from the pre-1988 world?

[Anthony Buckland]

As I read the scenario, I think rebuilding is a far too optimistic
thing to consider. Survival is far more important for most of the
surviving human population. The only rebuilding I can see happening
yet is of minor damage in countries affected only by errant weapons
or by local conventional warfare, revolutionary or involving
incursions by refugees or scavengers.

The Net was designed to survive nuclear attack. Let's be optimistic
and assume that some kind of networking using marine cable is
possible between the southern industrial countries such as Australia.
Then _if_ chip construction is still possible somewhere (certainly
not in Europe, North America, and northern and eastern Asia),
computing and networking may have been rebuilt to a useful state.
Google is history, but there might just be experts left in the south
who could start rebuilding the knowledge base we now use daily.
Satellite communications and GPS won't be restored for a generation
or maybe longer; nobody will have the surplus energy, money or
industrial capacity to think about renewed use of space for
anything, and surviving humanity might have a crippling paranoia
about building a rocket bigger than a firework.

Rebuilding food distribution in the south will be of the highest
priority. Along with that goes rebuilding ocean freight transport.
There should be plenty of civilian ships left in good shape, and
the ports should be OK, but oil must be found to drive the ships.
Conversion back to coal won't be possible, and all the northern
major oilfields will still be devastated, with no industry to
build the machinery, refineries, rigs and pipelines. Any surviving
northern ocean rigs will have long ago been pillaged.

Given enough computing, fuel and transport to keep southern societies
functioning and to get starvation under control, the next priority,
I think, should be beefing up medicine and the pharmaceutical
industry in the south to fend off plagues and other diseases coming
from the north, and then to start helping people progressively
farther north deal with their own scourges. The offer of drugs and
vaccines, in particular, could be very important in buying off or
fending off piracy on scales up to the national coming from the
scavengers in the north; otherwise the south could be ruined for
short-sighted reasons by desperate or predatory northern attacks
once it becomes known that the south has a growing number of things
worth stealing.

Considering how long it took from the flowering of the Industrial
Revolution until 1988, I wouldn't expect an analog (completely
different in detail) to the 1988 world to be built for at least
a century. The downside would be a lack of the original
enthusiasm; the upside would be a probable survival of most
scientific knowledge -- plus knowing where all the natural
resources still are underneath the wreckage.
particular

[The Horny Goat]

I would think the world would be doing well to have reached 1940
levels by 2012 - you're talking about the death of 35-40% of the
world's population, and most of the electrical grid was destroyed.

Computers would exist but only on military bases that were hardened to
avoid EMP - there would be no Internet as we know it. This would come
as industrial production returned but that's going to take
considerably more than 30 years - you were discussing subsistence
farming which means widespread starvation in the industrial countries.

The statement that there were deaths by cancer in 2010 but most deaths
were by other causes rings very true.