The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia is objectively low at the moment. Higher than the time before the Russo-Georgian War, far lower than the Cold War.
This may of course change in the following years.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 16:33

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 13:58

LolitaSama: Dec 27, 2011

Fojar38 posted:

This isn't how nuclear strategy works. MAD is an equilibrium that can easily be disrupted if there is ever a circumstance where one side thinks that they can win a nuclear war with a first strike that disables the enemy's ability to retaliate. You're only thinking about China's capabilities in the context of a Chinese first strike when China's second strike capability is virtually nonexistent.

This is why arms treaties in the Cold War focused very heavily on limiting defenses rather than the total number of nuclear warheads. It was to ensure that neither side could "win" a nuclear exchange with a knockout first strike on their adversaries missile sites.

Right now, in the context of nuclear war strategy, the US could absolutely defeat China with minimal to non-existant damage to itself with a well executed first strike.

And no, me explaining this doesn't mean I want a nuclear war. But nuclear war strategy is in fact a thing that is more complex than "fire ze missiles"

This is fascinating, where does the consensus come from that America would only be superficially damaged in a nuke strike against china and that MAD principle of China being also able to hit back equally as hard not being a thing? Because they have less nukes?

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:04

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

LolitaSama posted:

This is fascinating, where does the consensus come from that America would only be superficially damaged in a nuke strike against china and that MAD principle of China being also able to hit back equally as hard not being a thing? Because they have less nukes?

China currently has around 260 nuclear warheads. The US has around 1,750 active warheads and 6,970 total currently. In the event of a nuclear exchange, the US would be able to deploy enough warheads to possibly knock out China's ability to retaliate while China would have no ability to cripple the US nuclear response. This causes an imbalance in the MAD equilibrium and would allow the US to "win" a nuclear exchange, thus paradoxically making China's use of nuclear weapons much more likely.

You can also do the same exercise with the US and any other state but Russia and Russia with any other state but the US. If you can prevent second strike, you can win a nuclear war, which is a very bad thing for global peace and stability.

for reference here's how much everyone has

Russia
1,790 active, 7,300 total

USA
1,750 active, 6,970 total

UK
150 active, 215 total

France
290 active, 300 total

China
Unknown active number, 260 total

India
Unknown active number, 100-120 total

Pakistan
Unknown active number, 110-130 total

North Korea
Unknown active number, <10 total

Israel
Unknown active number, 60-400 total

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons

axeil fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:15

LolitaSama: Dec 27, 2011

axeil posted:

China currently has around 260 nuclear warheads. The US has around 4,670 currently. In the event of a nuclear exchange, the US would be able to deploy enough warheads to possibly knock out China's ability to retaliate while China would have no ability to do so. This causes an imbalance in the MAD equilibrium and would allow the US to "win" a nuclear exchange, thus making one much more likely.

You can also do the same exercise with the US and any other state but Russia and Russia with any other state but the US. If you can prevent second strike, you can win a nuclear war, which is a very bad thing for global peace and stability.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

But how do you knock out Nuclear Subs? Wouldn't the presense of those always ensure America couldn't knock out China's strike back potential? So is it because they simply have less that MAD isn't enforce or because they couldn't launch the little that they even had? If you could take nuclear subs out of the equation, and if this was the case, Israel would be in huge poo poo too. Not hard to knock out the Nuclear capabilities of a country the size of new jersey.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:16

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

LolitaSama posted:

But how do you knock out Nuclear Subs? Wouldn't the presense of those always ensure America couldn't knock out China's strike back potential? So is it because they simply have less that MAD isn't enforce or because they couldn't launch the little that they even had? If you could take nuclear subs out of the equation, and if this was the case, Israel would be in huge poo poo too. Not hard to knock out the Nuclear capabilities of a country the size of new jersey.

China only has 4 ballistic missile submarines (the Type 094 or Jin class) which may or may not even be deployed. They carry 12 nuclear missiles each. The US has 18 Ohio-class submarines somewhere in the water right now, each which has 24 Trident II nuclear missiles.

It is unclear if 4 subs is enough to serve as a valid 2nd strike option as I am not a nuclear strategist, only someone who's studied a lot of game theory. 18 Ohio-class subs however are considered a valid amount for full second-strike capabilities so somewhere between 0 and 432 missiles are needed for a second strike threat to be credible.

And yes, Israel is a major issue. Of course they deny that they have nukes, but everyone knows they do. This is why they've had the Samson policy of launching all their nukes at ~~everyone~~ (clarification: by everyone i mean all attacking enemies) if they are ever in danger of being destroyed even if by conventional forces. It's a fairly crazy policy but one they need to maintain (and maintain credibly) to avoid being nuked immediately if poo poo goes south.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

axeil fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:25

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

LolitaSama posted:

But how do you knock out Nuclear Subs? Wouldn't the presense of those always ensure America couldn't knock out China's strike back potential? So is it because they simply have less that MAD isn't enforce or because they couldn't launch the little that they even had? If you could take nuclear subs out of the equation, and if this was the case, Israel would be in huge poo poo too. Not hard to knock out the Nuclear capabilities of a country the size of new jersey.

You know the band "megadeth"? that is named after the concept of "megadeath" which was a cold war idea about counting out how many millions of people would die that was talked about in the context that as there could be an acceptable amount of megadeath. How many million people could those submarines kill? Not 300 million, so we would win, hurray!

"tragic but distinguishable postwar states"

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:25

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

You know the band "megadeth"? that is named after the concept of "megadeath" which was a cold war idea about counting out how many millions of people would die that was talked about in the context that as there could be an acceptable amount of megadeath. How many million people could those submarines kill? Not 300 million, so we would win, hurray!

"tragic but distinguishable postwar states"

for a real life simulation of this, please see the game "DEFCON" where you "win" if you can kill more of the bad guy than you yourself lose, even if the world is turned into a hellscape

http://store.steampowered.com/app/1520/

And yeah, that's basically what I'm getting at. 18 SSBNs are enough to ensure there's enough megadeath on the attacking state that they wouldn't "win" if they struck first. It's unclear if 4 is enough to do that in a hypothetical Chinese/US nuclear war.

Also there is doubt about whether the Chinese subs even have missiles on them. At a Congressional hearing back in 2015 members of the US military testified that the US does not currently believe there are any nuclear missiles on these subs.

The history of nuclear strategy is really fascinating and horrifying if you all want to read more about it. These are all good places to start and more rigorously define/explain things like "second strike" and "no first use"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

axeil fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:28

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

axeil posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

You missed the most hosed up one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

# ? Jan 20, 2017 19:58

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

You missed the most hosed up one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

I also like that instead of calling the opposite of "No First Use" "First Use" (AKA "We Will Totally Nuke You") they call it "Defensive Use Only"

But yeah the Samson Option is one of the most hosed up nuclear strategies out there. It's basically "if our existence is threatened we will nuke everyone nearby including possibly ourselves with the primary goal being killing everyone and not the destruction of military targets". It's a suicidal version of Massive Retaliation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_retaliation

Also kind of chilling that the Israeli government all but threatened the US government with implementing it during the Yom Kippur War if the US didn't send supplies.

edit: Also would we be able to make this the general nuclear/chemical/biological weapon proliferation and policy thread?

axeil fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 20:07

Morbus: May 18, 2004

axeil posted:

China only has 4 ballistic missile submarines (the Type 094 or Jin class) which may or may not even be deployed. They carry 12 nuclear missiles each. The US has 18 Ohio-class submarines somewhere in the water right now, each which has 24 Trident II nuclear missiles.

It is unclear if 4 subs is enough to serve as a valid 2nd strike option as I am not a nuclear strategist, only someone who's studied a lot of game theory. 18 Ohio-class subs however are considered a valid amount for full second-strike capabilities so somewhere between 0 and 432 missiles are needed for a second strike threat to be credible.

And yes, Israel is a major issue. Of course they deny that they have nukes, but everyone knows they do. This is why they've had the Samson policy of launching all their nukes at everyone if they are ever in danger of being destroyed even if by conventional forces. It's a fairly crazy policy but one they need to maintain (and maintain credibly) to avoid being nuked immediately if poo poo goes south.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

While nuclear submarines are the best option for a "mininaml effective deterrent" 2nd strike capability (and China is of course aware of this and seeking to increase it's SSBN force), they aren't the only option. Mobile ICBMs, if effectively deployed and managed, offer a credible-enough 2nd strike capability that even an all out counterfoce 1st strike by the US would probably result in dozens of warheads being launched. On top of even a small SSBN force, the resulting destruction may not be "total" in the sense that it would be vs an all-out countervalue 2nd strike from Russia, but it would nonetheless decimate the US economy, dozens of major cities, and kill a double digit % of the population.

To "win" a nuclear war with China, the US could not rely simply on its numerical superiority of warheads in a 1st strike, but would also have to have attack submarines in position to destroy some of China's SSBNs, and some means of identifying and destroying most land-mobile ICBM systems before they launch. This isn't impossible with stealth bombers and a good anti-submarine game, but it is getting into fantasy land.

In any case winning a nuclear war with China is a good start to losing one with Russia.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 20:36

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

I also like that instead of calling the opposite of "No First Use" "First Use" (AKA "We Will Totally Nuke You") they call it "Defensive Use Only"

But yeah the Samson Option is one of the most hosed up nuclear strategies out there. It's basically "if our existence is threatened we will nuke everyone nearby including possibly ourselves with the primary goal being killing everyone and not the destruction of military targets". It's a suicidal version of Massive Retaliation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_retaliation

Also kind of chilling that the Israeli government all but threatened the US government with implementing it during the Yom Kippur War if the US didn't send supplies.

edit: Also would we be able to make this the general nuclear/chemical/biological weapon proliferation and policy thread?

I've never seen any credible support for the allegation that the "Samson Option" involved nuking a bunch of major countries in an attempt to destroy the world. All claims to that effect, as far as I can tell, ultimately come from one of three types of sources: writers with no real knowledge of Israel nuclear policies writing grandiose nationalistic fantasies about taking revenge on the world for a second Holocaust, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world, and conspiracy theorists who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world. I've never seen even a trace of that description of the Samson Option in more reputable sources, which generally treat the Samson option as a standard nuclear deterrent (i.e., threatening to nuke the attacker if it looks like they're going to lose a defensive war).

# ? Jan 20, 2017 21:11

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Main Paineframe posted:

I've never seen any credible support for the allegation that the "Samson Option" involved nuking a bunch of major countries in an attempt to destroy the world. All claims to that effect, as far as I can tell, ultimately come from one of three types of sources: writers with no real knowledge of Israel nuclear policies writing grandiose nationalistic fantasies about taking revenge on the world for a second Holocaust, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world, and conspiracy theorists who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world. I've never seen even a trace of that description of the Samson Option in more reputable sources, which generally treat the Samson option as a standard nuclear deterrent (i.e., threatening to nuke the attacker if it looks like they're going to lose a defensive war).

Apologies if it came off like that, what I meant by "nuke a bunch of countries" was "nuking the countries attacking Israel". It does appear there is some vagueness about what that entails and whether say, an occupied Israeli city would be considered a valid target.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 21:15

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

Apologies if it came off like that, what I meant by "nuke a bunch of countries" was "nuking the countries attacking Israel". It does appear there is some vagueness about what that entails and whether say, an occupied Israeli city would be considered a valid target.

Sorry, I guess I misinterpreted you. Usually when the Samson Option gets brought up as somehow different from regular nuclear deterrence, that's what people are talking about, and someone who just glances over the Wikipedia page might not notice the poor sourcing.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 21:43

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Main Paineframe posted:

Sorry, I guess I misinterpreted you. Usually when the Samson Option gets brought up as somehow different from regular nuclear deterrence, that's what people are talking about, and someone who just glances over the Wikipedia page might not notice the poor sourcing.

Yeah I can see why it could appear like that. Most of my eyebrow raising at it is that, unlike everyone else's nuclear deterrence strategy Israel's is secret since they don't admit they have nuclear weapons, which is why you can get a lot of this telephone whispering. Also that in all the media I've seen discussing it, they never seem to know if enemy-occupied but de jure Israeli territory is a legitimate target. I mean, I would hope it isn't, but since we can't get confirmation it's a bit unnerving.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:08

Talmonis: Jun 24, 2012; The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

axeil posted:

China only has 4 ballistic missile submarines (the Type 094 or Jin class) which may or may not even be deployed. They carry 12 nuclear missiles each. The US has 18 Ohio-class submarines somewhere in the water right now, each which has 24 Trident II nuclear missiles.

It is unclear if 4 subs is enough to serve as a valid 2nd strike option as I am not a nuclear strategist, only someone who's studied a lot of game theory. 18 Ohio-class subs however are considered a valid amount for full second-strike capabilities so somewhere between 0 and 432 missiles are needed for a second strike threat to be credible.

And yes, Israel is a major issue. Of course they deny that they have nukes, but everyone knows they do. This is why they've had the Samson policy of launching all their nukes at everyone if they are ever in danger of being destroyed even if by conventional forces. It's a fairly crazy policy but one they need to maintain (and maintain credibly) to avoid being nuked immediately if poo poo goes south.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

See, this sort of poo poo is why nobody likes Israel. Losing a conventional war, they promise to lash out at civilians around the world for not fighting their war for them. Here's hoping someone manages to sabotage their entire arsenal someday, before they murder billions.

Hooray for that being debunked. Granted, I can see Bibi and Likud doing something so callous, much like Putin and Trump.

Talmonis fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:22

Three-Phase: Aug 5, 2006; by zen death robot

Nuclear EMP. China, Russia, or North Korea could do it. You can shut the entire country down with one weapon at the right altitude. It could even be in a satellite in low-earth orbit.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:29

Talmonis: Jun 24, 2012; The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Three-Phase posted:

Nuclear EMP. China, Russia, or North Korea could do it. You can shut the entire country down with one weapon at the right altitude. It could even be in a satellite in low-earth orbit.

Oh sure, but thankfully that wouldn't stop 2nd strike from the sub force wiping out the perpetrator, maintaining the deterrant.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:30

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Three-Phase posted:

Nuclear EMP. China, Russia, or North Korea could do it. You can shut the entire country down with one weapon at the right altitude. It could even be in a satellite in low-earth orbit.

it also has the advantage of not intentionally trying to kill anyone! i mean, loads of people would die from having no working electronics but that wouldn't be the primary purpose of the weapon.

although that does raise the point, is the primary purpose of a nuclear weapon the loss of life, the terror, the denial of territory through fallout/contamination, or the destruction of infrastructure?

axeil fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 20, 2017

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:32

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

Yeah I can see why it could appear like that. Most of my eyebrow raising at it is that, unlike everyone else's nuclear deterrence strategy Israel's is secret since they don't admit they have nuclear weapons, which is why you can get a lot of this telephone whispering. Also that in all the media I've seen discussing it, they never seem to know if enemy-occupied but de jure Israeli territory is a legitimate target. I mean, I would hope it isn't, but since we can't get confirmation it's a bit unnerving.

I'd assume it depends on the severity of the situation, what kinds of weapons are in Israel's arsenal, and the objective of the strike. Obviously, no country really wants to rain down radioactive fallout on any territory they expect to keep after the war, but tactical nuclear weapons are mostly good for shooting at where the enemy are, rather than where they aren't. Strategic strikes would likely be aimed at the enemy countries' cities in hopes of inflicting so much damage to the country that it forces a quick peace agreement.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 22:59

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

axeil posted:

it also has the advantage of not intentionally trying to kill anyone! i mean, loads of people would die from having no working electronics but that wouldn't be the primary purpose of the weapon.

although that does raise the point, is the primary purpose of a nuclear weapon the loss of life, the terror, the denial of territory through fallout/contamination, or the destruction of infrastructure?

An EMP attack carried out by ballistic missile would still kill everyone in the attacking and target countries. An ICBM on track to detonate high above your country is indistinguishable in flight from one that's just going to keep flying and land in one of your cities. Any nuclear power with launch on alert capabilities would immediately retaliate as soon as confirmation was received, and the EMP-launching party would shoot back as well.

As for the second part of your post, nukes can be specialized for different functions. A neutron bomb emits a disproportionate amount of its yield as high-energy particles that kill biological creatures dead but minimize damage to structures and vehicles. Obviously ground zero would still be blasted flat since it's still a nuke. Tactical nukes and cobalt bombs can both be used for area denial, either short- or long-term respectively. And for maximizing loss of life nothing beats a countervalue strike with a MIRV.

# ? Jan 20, 2017 23:59

Three-Phase: Aug 5, 2006; by zen death robot

You're assuming that there is a clear source location. There are a couple of ways to potentially get around that:

1. Launch a SLBM from a submarine
2. Launch from a ship (you may even be able to use something like a SCUD)
3. Have a nuclear weapon that's already in orbit (assuming the satellite is not tracked) - or maybe even something like an "undisclosed payload" launched by another country or private organization?
4. ICBM launched independantly by a non-government

Those are scenarios where you might get sucker punched and not know for certain who the attacker is.

Key military infrastructure is hardened. Most everything else is not.

Three-Phase fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 03:37

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Chinese nuclear submarines are also bad and in a state of heightened tensions wouldn't help China's second strike capacity all that much. They're really noisy and easy to track. Hell, the US Navy is probably tracking them a whole lot already, how else would they know that they probably aren't carrying any nukes?

# ? Jan 21, 2017 03:49

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

axeil posted:

I also like that instead of calling the opposite of "No First Use" "First Use" (AKA "We Will Totally Nuke You") they call it "Defensive Use Only"

But yeah the Samson Option is one of the most hosed up nuclear strategies out there. It's basically "if our existence is threatened we will nuke everyone nearby including possibly ourselves with the primary goal being killing everyone and not the destruction of military targets". It's a suicidal version of Massive Retaliation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_retaliation

Also kind of chilling that the Israeli government all but threatened the US government with implementing it during the Yom Kippur War if the US didn't send supplies.

edit: Also would we be able to make this the general nuclear/chemical/biological weapon proliferation and policy thread?

I've always waffles on the inclusion of chemical in the category. Like yeah, they serve no useful purpose other than a terror weapon / killing civilians, but they don't have the same sort of massive death potential. Worst case scenario you render a region dangerous to inhabit.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 03:55

spiderbyte: Nov 14, 2016

axeil posted:

for a real life simulation of this, please see the game "DEFCON" where you "win" if you can kill more of the bad guy than you yourself lose, even if the world is turned into a hellscape

http://store.steampowered.com/app/1520/

And yeah, that's basically what I'm getting at. 18 SSBNs are enough to ensure there's enough megadeath on the attacking state that they wouldn't "win" if they struck first. It's unclear if 4 is enough to do that in a hypothetical Chinese/US nuclear war.

Also there is doubt about whether the Chinese subs even have missiles on them. At a Congressional hearing back in 2015 members of the US military testified that the US does not currently believe there are any nuclear missiles on these subs.

The history of nuclear strategy is really fascinating and horrifying if you all want to read more about it. These are all good places to start and more rigorously define/explain things like "second strike" and "no first use"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

Do you happen to know of any longer form books or such that go into nuclear strategy and thinking? The topic is very interesting to me and I am looking for a new audiobook to listen to while driving.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 07:28

Bip Roberts: Mar 29, 2005

I think Trump also introduces a real danger from the use of imprecise language. Mixed messages sent to another country could lead to the perception that the US was okay with a conventional move (invasion etc) when they weren't. This leads to the possibility of conflict escalation in a number of ways. A good example of this was Saddam's interpretation that the US wouldn't intervene in his invasion of Kuwait. If Trump keeps on saying he's not going to assist NATO allies what happens after one gets attacked and he decides he will?

# ? Jan 21, 2017 07:59

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

axeil posted:

as we've never had a cabinet attempt a coup against a president it is unclear if the secret service/military would side with the coup or potus. testing that theory when we are under threat of a nuclear exchange is...unwise.

if sec def or whoever tells trump they're not firing the missiles and he says "you're fired" and then is confronted with the full cabinet saying "no, you're fired" it's a really bad time to test whether the secret service/military follow trump's orders to "shoot the traitors" or the cabinet's order to "arrest and remove trump"

i mean, they're people, not robots. common sense would dictate that they would not be okay with the world ending in nuclear loving hellfire. if it came down to that, it seems pretty blindingly obvious to me that they'd side with the cabinet, especially if it was a unanimous decision.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 08:01

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

axeil posted:

China only has 4 ballistic missile submarines (the Type 094 or Jin class) which may or may not even be deployed. They carry 12 nuclear missiles each. The US has 18 Ohio-class submarines somewhere in the water right now, each which has 24 Trident II nuclear missiles.

It is unclear if 4 subs is enough to serve as a valid 2nd strike option as I am not a nuclear strategist, only someone who's studied a lot of game theory. 18 Ohio-class subs however are considered a valid amount for full second-strike capabilities so somewhere between 0 and 432 missiles are needed for a second strike threat to be credible.

A couple of observations.

1. The USN has 14 Ohio SSBNs in total (4 of the original 18 have been converted to SSGNs). Not all of them are in the water right now. Also, all of them are capable of carrying up to 24 Trident D5s each, but they are not doing that. Each D5 is capable of carrying up to 14 warheads in a MIRV configuration (either W88 or the smaller yield W76), but they are not currently carrying as much. Right now, if all Ohios were out in the water and if all of them were permitted to carry the maximum amount of vehicles and weapons, each Ohio would carry 20 or 21 D5s, with each one having 4 MIRV warheads (for a total of 288 vehicles and 1152 deployed warheads). See the ratified - and in effect - New START.

2. China wants a credible SLBM deterrent, but they are not quite there yet. They are methodical in the way they are approaching this though, first fielding a prototype (092 Xia) and then going into production mode with 4 094s. It is currently thought that their earlier plans for a fleet of 8 Xia class SSBNs are scrapped, and that work is put in into bringing their next design into service, which has the capability of fielding up to 24 vehicles (096 Tang class). It is rumored that the sub will carry a modified version of the DF-41 ICBM, called JL-3. In that case, we are talking about a heavy SLBM in the R-39 Rif class (80 tonnes), capable of hitting the continental US from Chinese coastal waters.

Much depends, however, on whether China shifts its overall nuclear posture from minimal deterrence to active pursuit of secure second strike capability. China has (correctly imo) identified that the best way forward is to field ICBMs in road mobile TELs, taking into advantage the vastness of the Chinese mainland for cover and concealment. This provides a credible minimal deterrence against a first strike (see DF-31 variants and DF-41 to replace the mainly silo based DF-5 and DF-4s), but China still does not have the numbers needed for a viable/secure second strike.

This might change in the near (5 years) future.

Dante80 fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 08:47

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

China is facing some problems in that regard, however. They are still struggling to develop submarines that are even close to the US in terms of quietness and longevity, combined with the fact that the US and Japan have the entire coast of China from Korea to India wired to detect Chinese submarines. This severely limits the ability for China to operate submarines without being detected even in their coastal waters, to say nothing of submarine-detecting aircraft located in US bases spanning the East and South China Seas.

These waters are also really shallow and consequently it's easier to find submarines in them. A submarine isn't truly safe until it's on the high seas and this was a problem for the Soviets constantly, who faced similar geographical constraints and consequently by the end of the Cold War virtually every Soviet sub was being shadowed by the US Navy as soon as they left port.

China is geographically boxed in, a fact that regularly vexes Chinese strategists.

Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 08:56

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

This is true, and one of the main reasons for China spending some big bucks on developing a true blue water navy cap in the future (they do have some way to go still). Also, the choke-hold of the South/East China Sea theaters is one of the reasons for China bringing the ASuW IRBMs to the table in their first place, as well as developing bases on the SCS.

Still though, this has not much to do with second strike SLBM cap.

Ballistic submarines are designed to creep as close as possible to the mainland of the opponent undetected to launch a first strike that removes most of the reaction time for a massive retaliation or ABM measures. Depending on the number of fielded vehicles and warheads, a SSBN force in that scenario can work as a decapitation strike force (which prompted USSR to develop fail-deadly measures like the Dead Hand/Perimeter system), or as a massive first strike element against counterforce targets(*) to reduce or eliminate the opponents second strike cap.

At the same time, they are fielded as a traditional and expensive first strike deterrent, with the mission of providing second strike capability. In that case, SSBNs can be fielded close to home and under the protective umbrella of the friendly air-force and navy forces. When used in that role SSBNs are "hardened" against SSN hunter attacks by the proximity and operations of those forces, and their mission is to provide the deterrent against a first strike on the mainland.

In the Chinese example, to fulfill the second strike cap they need two things.

1. A delivery vehicle with enough range to target the mainland US from SCS or other coastal waters.
2. Enough actively fielded vehicles and warheads to provide a secure second strike cap.

They are currently working on both, and this is consistent with Chinas' NFU policy after all. The question here is whether China truly wants to pursue a very expensive secure second strike cap or not. Their mobile TELs are much cheaper, and can also do that to a certain degree. Now.

(*) Historically, SSBNs could only target countervalue targets (due to the innate CEP inaccuracy that early SLBMs had), but with the advances in electronics in the last decades it is possible to also use them now as a first and second strike counterforce element (in the latter scenario though, it is still more logical to go for the countervalue targets, as the deterrent becomes higher since most counterforce targets are already depleted from the first strike).

Dante80 fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 09:48

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Dante80 posted:

This is true, and one of the main reasons for China spending some big bucks on developing a true blue water navy cap in the future (they do have some way to go still). Also, the choke-hold of the South/East China Sea theaters is one of the reasons for China bringing the ASuW IRBMs to the table in their first place, as well as developing bases on the SCS.

Still though, this has not much to do with second strike SLBM cap.

My point is mostly that SLBM's are only useful insofar as they are mobile and invisible. China's submarines are neither and won't be anytime soon barring a massive leap in technology that we don't see any signs of occurring. While this means that they could theoretically launch from submarines near the Chinese coast, at that point you may as well just be using land-based systems.

To be totally honest if I were in charge of formulating China's nuclear war strategy I wouldn't be wasting my limited nukes on strikes on the continental US; I'd be focusing them on US and Japanese bases in the Western Pacific in order to try and knock out the first island chain defense line.

Of course, if someone asked me to formulate a winning nuclear strategy for China I would have to say that I couldn't without far, far more tools to work with, either more warheads or better boomers/bombers, and with China as weak as it is now even knocking out the first island chain would just be delaying the inevitable, which would just leave "try and reach the west coast as a final gently caress you"

Which brings us back to the ultimate question of "what tensions exist between the US and China that either side would be willing to use nukes over." As much as the CCP huffs and puffs about Taiwan if it was so important to them that they would wage a nuclear war over it they would have invaded by now. As has been pointed out there isn't any coherent chain of escalation that could result in a nuclear exchange between China and the US. There is no theoretical Berlin or Cuba crisis that could be thought of because the fact of the matter is that great power tensions really aren't any more significant right now than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Trump is probably going to seek de-escalation and alliance with Russia, China is in decline and has to worry more about domestic problems at the moment and don't even really have the capacity to wage a distraction war, and all the other nuclear powers are US allies/have no ICBM capacity.

The greatest nuclear risks remain a nuclear arms race in the middle east, proliferation in general, terrorism, and north korea, things that existed long before Trump.

Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 12:16

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

Fojar38 posted:

My point is mostly that SLBM's are only useful insofar as they are mobile and invisible. China's submarines are neither and won't be anytime soon barring a massive leap in technology that we don't see any signs of occurring. While this means that they could theoretically launch from submarines near the Chinese coast, at that point you may as well just be using land-based systems.

What I explained above is that your point is mostly irrelevant since China is not pursuing a first strike cap against the US. SSBNs need deep sea invisibility if they have to be used as first strike weapons. As a second strike element, they simply need hardening and vehicle range. As I stated above, China has a NFU policy, and has also developed TELs for their ICBMs, which makes the strategic importance of SLBMs as a deterrence force smaller.

Which is the reason that many are contemplating China moving/keeping more resources to the land part of the triad, instead of paying the very big expense for a secure second strike cap via SLBMs.

Fojar38 posted:

Which brings us back to the ultimate question of "what tensions exist between the US and China that either side would be willing to use nukes over." As much as the CCP huffs and puffs about Taiwan if it was so important to them that they would wage a nuclear war over it they would have invaded by now. As has been pointed out there isn't any coherent chain of escalation that could result in a nuclear exchange between China and the US. There is no theoretical Berlin or Cuba crisis that could be thought of because the fact of the matter is that great power tensions really aren't any more significant right now than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Trump is probably going to seek de-escalation and alliance with Russia, China is in decline and has to worry more about domestic problems at the moment and don't even really have the capacity to wage a distraction war, and all the other nuclear powers are US allies/have no ICBM capacity.

The greatest nuclear risks remain a nuclear arms race in the middle east, proliferation in general, terrorism, and north korea, things that existed long before Trump.

Agreed, completely.

Dante80 fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Jan 21, 2017

# ? Jan 21, 2017 12:34

hakimashou: Jul 15, 2002; Upset Trowel

"If you invade us we will nuke you" is the right policy for Israel to have and the one which makes it least likely they will ever either be invaded or use nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are mankind's greatest invention, the only machine that creates peace.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 12:49

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

hakimashou posted:

"If you invade us we will nuke you" is the right policy for Israel to have and the one which makes it least likely they will ever either be invaded or use nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are mankind's greatest invention, the only machine that creates peace.

Dr. Gatling's dream is at last realized.

Sort of relatedly, does anyone find no first use policies to be accidentally hilarious? Like, a nuclear power can say that they wouldn't launch first all they want but if an army they couldn't stop was genociding their populace and systemically crushing any resistance, they'd do it. Limiting situations in which nukes will be used is great but with a blanket NFU stance it's kinda like... come on.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:04

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

Using nukes on metropolitan areas as a component in a strategic exchange is one thing, but in the case of China in particular and also Russia I find the most primarily concerning use in a defensive posture as part of say, intervention in the South China Sea or Crimea.

More knowledgeable folk than me have pretty aptly demonstrated why first-striking the US mainland is a pretty bad idea for anyone, and how second-striking is not terribly credible from any forseeable party, but what if China uses some of their limited stock to erase two or three carrier battle groups throwing their heft around in waters they claim? That is a much more plausible and thornier deployment of those weapons than outclassed subs taking a shot at the west coast USA, IMO.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:19

hakimashou: Jul 15, 2002; Upset Trowel

Willie Tomg posted:

Using nukes on metropolitan areas as a component in a strategic exchange is one thing, but in the case of China in particular and also Russia I find the most primarily concerning use in a defensive posture as part of say, intervention in the South China Sea or Crimea.

More knowledgeable folk than me have pretty aptly demonstrated why first-striking the US mainland is a pretty bad idea for anyone, and how second-striking is not terribly credible from any forseeable party, but what if China uses some of their limited stock to erase two or three carrier battle groups throwing their heft around in waters they claim? That is a much more plausible and thornier deployment of those weapons than outclassed subs taking a shot at the west coast USA, IMO.

What happened to Japan after it bombed our navy?

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:24

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

Policies/pledges can, and do change in a jiffy, especially if we are talking about war. The NFU pledge China has is predominantly a political/legitimization weapon in the proliferation arena.

Actually, this more or less holds true for every country. All nuclear powers (including North Korea, which has a stated NFU btw too), describe in their nuclear cap as a strictly defensive measure.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:26

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

Willie Tomg posted:

Using nukes on metropolitan areas as a component in a strategic exchange is one thing, but in the case of China in particular and also Russia I find the most primarily concerning use in a defensive posture as part of say, intervention in the South China Sea or Crimea.

More knowledgeable folk than me have pretty aptly demonstrated why first-striking the US mainland is a pretty bad idea for anyone, and how second-striking is not terribly credible from any forseeable party, but what if China uses some of their limited stock to erase two or three carrier battle groups throwing their heft around in waters they claim? That is a much more plausible and thornier deployment of those weapons than outclassed subs taking a shot at the west coast USA, IMO.

The U.S. has zero problem with first use against nuclear armed opponents. If you're already in a hypothetical high threat possible war situation, multiple Ohio subs are going to already be right off the Chinese coast. If they get intelligence in time about what you're planning, everyone in Beijing has three minutes to live. If they don't get it time, everyone in Beijing has 3 minutes + Chinese missile TOT to the carrier group to live.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:29

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Willie Tomg posted:

Using nukes on metropolitan areas as a component in a strategic exchange is one thing, but in the case of China in particular and also Russia I find the most primarily concerning use in a defensive posture as part of say, intervention in the South China Sea or Crimea.

More knowledgeable folk than me have pretty aptly demonstrated why first-striking the US mainland is a pretty bad idea for anyone, and how second-striking is not terribly credible from any forseeable party, but what if China uses some of their limited stock to erase two or three carrier battle groups throwing their heft around in waters they claim? That is a much more plausible and thornier deployment of those weapons than outclassed subs taking a shot at the west coast USA, IMO.

There is functionally no difference between this scenario and nuking LA. Both would provoke a full nuclear response from the USA.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:32

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

Willie Tomg posted:

what if China uses some of their limited stock to erase two or three carrier battle groups throwing their heft around in waters they claim?

It'd be open season on China for all responses up to, and possibly including, nuclear counter-value strikes.

The US wouldn't need nukes to dismantle the Chinese government, but it would be quicker and there would be very few objections.

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:34

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 13:58

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

I feel kinda bad about the gutrumbly feel of that last post so while my knowledge of nuclear capability and game theory is spotty, here's an essay that mostly encapsulates what knowledge I do have on the subject. Get ready to limber up that scrolling finger, boyos

quote:

The Nuclear Game - An Essay on Nuclear Policy Making

When a country first acquires nuclear weapons it does so out of a very accurate perception that possession of nukes fundamentally changes it relationships with other powers. What nuclear weapons buy for a New Nuclear Power (NNP) is the fact that once the country in question has nuclear weapons, it cannot be beaten. It can be defeated, that is it can be prevented from achieving certain goals or stopped from following certain courses of action, but it cannot be beaten. It will never have enemy tanks moving down the streets of its capital, it will never have its national treasures looted and its citizens forced into servitude. The enemy will be destroyed by nuclear attack first. A potential enemy knows that so will not push the situation to the point where our NNP is on the verge of being beaten. In effect, the effect of acquiring nuclear weapons is that the owning country has set limits on any conflict in which it is involved. This is such an immensely attractive option that states find it irresistible.

Only later do they realize the problem. Nuclear weapons are so immensely destructive that they mean a country can be totally destroyed by their use. Although our NNP cannot be beaten by an enemy it can be destroyed by that enemy. Although a beaten country can pick itself up and recover, the chances of a country devastated by nuclear strikes doing the same are virtually non-existent. [This needs some elaboration. Given the likely scale and effects of a nuclear attack, its most unlikely that the everybody will be killed. There will be survivors and they will rebuild a society but it will have nothing in common with what was there before. So, to all intents and purposes, once a society initiates a nuclear exchange its gone forever]. Once this basic factor has been absorbed, the NNP makes a fundamental realization that will influence every move it makes from this point onwards. If it does nothing, its effectively invincible. If, however, it does something, there is a serious risk that it will initiate a chain of events that will eventually lead to a nuclear holocaust. The result of that terrifying realization is strategic paralysis.

With that appreciation of strategic paralysis comes an even worse problem. A non-nuclear country has a wide range of options for its forces. Although its actions may incur a risk of being beaten they do not court destruction. Thus, a non-nuclear nation can afford to take risks of a calculated nature. However,a nuclear-equipped nation has to consider the risk that actions by its conventional forces will lead to a situation where it may have to use its nuclear forces with the resulting holocaust. Therefore, not only are its strategic nuclear options restricted by its possession of nuclear weapons, so are its tactical and operational options. So we add tactical and operational paralysis to the strategic variety. This is why we see such a tremendous emphasis on the mechanics of decision making in nuclear powers. Every decision has to be thought through, not for one step or the step after but for six, seven or eight steps down the line.

We can see this in the events of the 1960s and 1970s, especially surrounding the Vietnam War. Every so often, the question gets asked "How could the US have won in Vietnam?" with a series of replies that include invading the North,extending the bombing to China and other dramatic escalations of the conflict. Now, it should be obvious why such suggestions could not, in the real world, be contemplated. The risk of ending up in a nuclear war was too great. For another example, note how the presence of nuclear weapons restricted and limited the tactical and operational options available to both sides in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In effect neither side could push the war to a final conclusion because to do so would bring down nuclear attack on the heads of the "winners". Here, Israel's nuclear arsenal was limiting the conflict before it even started. Egypt and Syria couldn't destroy the country - all they could do was to chew up enough of the Israeli armed forces and put themselves in the correct strategic position to dictate a peace agreement on much more favorable terms than would be the case. But, the Israeli nuclear arsenal also limited the conflict in another way. Because they were a nuclear power they were fair game; if they pushed the Egyptians too hard, they would demand Soviet assistance and who knew where that would lead?

So, the direct effects of nuclear weapons in a nation's hands is to make that nation extremely cautious. They spend much time studying situations, working out the implications of such situations, what the likely results of certain policy options are. One of the immense advantages the US had in the Cold War was that they had a network of Research Institutes and Associations and consulting companies who spent their time doing exactly this sort of work. (Ahh the dear dead days of planning nuclear wars. The glow of satisfaction as piecutters are placed over cities; the warm feeling of fulfillment as the death toll passed the billion mark; the sick feeling of disappointment as the casualties from a given strategy only amounted to some 40 million when preliminary studies had shown a much more productive result. But I digress). This meant that a much wider range of policy options could be studied than was possible if the ideas were left in military hands.These organizations, the famous think tanks had no inhibitions about asking very awkward questions that would end the career of a military officer doing the same. This network became known as The Business. We're still out here.

So. What were nuclear weapons good for? It seems they are more of a liability than an asset. To some extent that's true but the important fact remains,they do limit conflict. As long as they are in place and functional they are an insurance policy against a nation getting beaten. That means that if that country is going to get beaten, its nuclear weapons have to be taken out first. It also means that if it ever uses its nuclear weapons, once they are gone, its invulnerability vanishes with it. Thus, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is a lot more effective and valuable than the likely results of using those weapons. Of course, this concern becomes moot if it appears likely that the NNP is about to lose its nuclear weapons to a pre-emptive strike. Under these circumstances, the country may decide that its in a use-it-or-lose-it situation.The more vulnerable to pre-emption those weapons are the stronger that imperative becomes.

This is why ICBMs are such an attractive option. They are faster-reacting than bombers, they are easier to protect on the ground and they are much more likely to get through to their targets. This is why modern, advanced devices are much more desirable than the older versions. In the 1950s the Soviet Union had a nuclear attack reaction time of six weeks (don't laugh, that of the US was 30 days). The reason was simple, device design in those days meant that the device, once assembled, deteriorated very quickly and, once degraded, had to be sent back to the plant for remanufacture. Device assembly needed specialized teams and took time. This made a first strike very, very attractive - as long as the attacker could be sure of getting all the enemy force. It was this long delay to get forces available that made air defense and ABM such an attractive option. In effect, it could blunt an enemy attack while the assembly crews frantically put their own devices together and got them ready for launch. As advancing device design made it possible to reduce assembly time, this aspect of ABM became less important.

What this also suggests is that large, secure nuclear arsenals are inherently safer than small, vulnerable ones. A large arsenal means that the owner can do appalling damage to an enemy, a secure arsenal means that no matter how the enemy attacks, enough weapons will survive to allow that destruction to take place. Here we have the genesis of the most misunderstood term in modern warfare - MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. (Another point of elaboration here - MAD is not a policy and has never been instituted as a policy option. It's the effect of policies that have been promulgated. This is a very useful touchstone - if people mention the US Policy of MAD, they don't know what they are talking about). Its widely believed that this suggests that both sides are wide open to unrestricted destruction by the other. This is a gross over-simplification. What the term actually means is that both sides have enough nuclear firepower to destroy the other and that the firepower in question is configured in such ways that no pre-emptive strike can destroy enough of it to take away the fact that the other country will be destroyed. MAD did not preclude the use of defensive systems - in fact it was originally formulated to show how important they are - but its misunderstood version was held to do so - with catastrophic results for us all. One implication of this by the way is that in spite of all the fuss over the Chinese stealing the W88 warhead design, the net beneficiary of that is the United States; it allows the Chinese to build a much more secure deterrent and thus a more stable one. Also, looking at things purely ruthlessly, its better for one's enemy to make small clean bombs than big dirty ones.

Aha, I hear you say what about the mad dictator? Its interesting to note that mad, homicidal aggressive dictators tend to get very tame sane cautious ones as soon as they split atoms. Whatever their motivations and intents, the mechanics of how nuclear weapons work dictate that mad dictators become sane dictators very quickly. After all its not much fun dictating if one's country is a radioactive trash pile and you're one of the ashes. China, India and Pakistan are good examples. One of the best examples of this process at work is Mao Tse Tung. Throughout the 1950s he was extraordinarily bellicose and repeatedly tried to bully, cajole or trick Khruschev and his successors into initiating a nuclear exchange with the US on the grounds that world communism would rise from the ashes. Thats what Quemoy and Matsu were all about in the late 1950s. Then China got nuclear weapons. Have you noticed how reticent they are with them? Its sunk in. They can be totally destroyed; will be totally destroyed; in the event of an exchange. A Chinese Officer here once on exchange (billed as a "look what we can do" session it was really a "look what we can do to you" exercise) produced the standard line about how the Chinese could lose 500 million people in a nuclear war and keep going with the survivors. So his hosts got out a demographic map (one that shows population densities rather than topographical data) and got to work with pie-cutters using a few classified tricks - and got virtually the entire population of China using only a small proportion of the US arsenal. The guest stared at the map for a couple of minutes then went and tossed his cookies into the toilet bowl. The only people who mouth off about using nuclear weapons and threaten others with them are those that do not have keys hanging around their necks. The moment they get keys and realize what they've let themselves in for, they get to be very quiet and very cautious indeed. Another great - and very recent example - look how circumspect the Indians and Pakistani Governments were in the recent confrontation - lots of words but little or no action to back them and both sides worked very hard not to do anything that could be misunderstood. (When the Pakistani's did a missile test they actually invited the Indians over to watch in order to ensure there was no ground for misunderstanding. The test itself was another message from both countries to the rest of the world - basically it read "Don't sweat it, we know the rules")

The Nuclear Game (Two) - Targeting Weapons

One of the interesting aspects of a nuclear war is planning how its going to be done. Most fictional accounts of this process seem to assume that cities will be the primary targets and there will be one device allocated per city. This is very far from the truth. In fact, nuclear attack plans are very complicated things and, in a quite real sense, they don't exist. What does exist is a whole series of strategies aimed at achieving specific results. Which of those strategies are adopted and in what combinations is determined by the specific events taking place. Very often we'll hear of people talking about "The SIOP" as the Holy Grail of the US nuclear war plans. A good touchstone because there is no such thing - if people claim to have worked on the SIOP, they are being economical with the truth. What does exist are a very large number of plans and options that are put together on a mix-and-match basis.

Unfortunately planning a nuclear strike isn't just a matter of working out which cities to destroy. In fact it isn't even a matter of working out which cities to destroy. In fact, we don't target cities at all per se. We target things, some of which happen to be in cities. Its necessary to remember the key; nuclear weapons are a tool, no more, no less. We don't blow up cities just because they are there any more than we fix a TV antenna on the roof by digging a hole in the back garden.

Since we are using a tool to do a job, the first stage is to work out a series of objectives (ie decide what that job is). Normally discussions of such things rotate around strategies being either counter-force or counter-city but its a lot more complex than that. At the last count there were about 30 distinct targeting strategies that could be adopted. As an example, there could be:-

Counter-military - aimed at destroying a country's armed forces. Such a strike would be aimed at things like arsenals, ports, airbases, military training sites etc

Counter-strategic - aimed at taking out a country's strategic weapons force. This would hit the ICBM silos, SSBN ports and bases, the SSBNs themselves, bomber bases, nuclear storage depots etc.

Counter-industrial - aimed at destroying key industrial assets and breaking the target country's industrial infrastructure

Counter-energy - aimed at destroying a country's energy supplies and resources plus the means for distributing them.
Counter-communications - aimed at disrupting and eliminating the target country's communications (radio, TV, landline, satellite etc)communications systems.

Counter-political - aimed at erasing the target country's political leadership - note this is MUCH more difficult than it seems and is very dangerous. Killing the only people who can surrender is not terribly bright

Counter-population - aimed at simply killing as much of the enemy population as possible. A very rare strategy.

There are plenty of others. One of the things that gets done at this level is to think up targeting strategies, work out the target sets associated with that strategy and the resources needed to eliminate that target set. Based on that we can then work out if that particular target strategy is an effective use of resources. Note also that adopting one particular target strategy does not preclude simultaneously putting another into play. Mix and match again.

So lets look at a typical targeting problem in an average sort of strike. We are going to give the capital of Outer Loonyistan a really thorough seeing-to. Now we don't just explode a bomb in the center of the city and say bye-bye. Believe it or not that won't do any real good. Initiate a 1 megaton device over the center of London and 95 percent of the cities assets and 80 percent of the population will survive (this means that, proportionally speaking, Londoners will be better off after a nuclear attack than they were before it took place. This was the basis of at least one Get Rich Quick scheme proposed in The Business).

So we start by selecting a specific targeting strategy. Now we have to estimate the weight of attack Asylumville is likely to come under if that strategy is adopted. To do this we first work out how high Asylumville stands with regard to other potential target areas for that particular strategy. This is usually done by a careful assessment of what targets are in that area as opposed to similar target areas in other parts of the country and assuming the available warheads are distributed according to the target density in that area. Then we assess how many warheads are likely to be inbound and crank that into the priorities we've established to see how many are likely to be fired at Asylumville. It'll be a lot fewer than you think. This means is that we have to look very carefully at the city, its geography and the distribution of its assets in order to work out how to take it down.

To do this we need some maps. We need a standard topographical map, demographic maps and asset/resource maps. Take the targeting strategy and the likely target set associated with it and plot them on that map. Now think out how hard that target set is going to be to destroy. The problems now become apparent. Some targets are best attacked by surface bursts, others by high airbursts. Some, very hard targets need almost direct hits to destroy them; others are so small (and so hard) that hitting them is very difficult.The sort of things we might look at hitting, depending how we do things, are communication facilities, railway marshalling yards, factories, oil refineries, government offices, military bases For example, if the target strategy is anti-communications,amongst the primary targets will be airfields and railway marshalling yards.They are notoriously difficult to destroy, the attacker needs big warheads and needs to ground burst them so the target is physically scoured from the ground. There is a lot of thought needed here; you'll find there are far more potential targets than real warheads so you'll have to allocate the warheads one way, then try to work out the effects. To give you some idea of how that list grows, there are something like 50,000 priority nuclear targets in Russia. Some of them are weird and tucked right out of the way (one of the most critical non-military targets in the USA is where you would least expect it). Now many of that 50,000 target list will be virtually on top of eachother. One initiation will get several of them. That pulls the list down immensely, probably to around 3,000 - 5,000 targets.

OK back to working over Asylumville, the capital of Outer Loonyistan. If its like most other capitals, it'll probably merit a total of between five and ten devices to take out all the things we want to. One of the key tools used here is a thing called a pie-cutter. Its a circular hand-held computer. You set the verniers on it to the specifics of the weapon used (altitude of burst, yield etc) and it gives you a series of rings that show the various lethal effects of the bomb to certain distances. Put it down on the planned impact point and you'll get what the bomb will do. You won't get a pie cutter (they are classified equipment) but you can make your own from publically available data using tracing paper and compasses. . We end up with a map of the city after being worked over. Normally, at this point somebody says. Dammit we didn't get [insert some key assets] and we start again. The first shot at targeting will be stunningly disappointing so you play games with warhead types and yields and with burst locations until you get as many of target set as you can. Take that marshalling yard; sounds easy doesn't it? Believe me railway marshalling yards are a whirling son of a bitch to take down. They are virtually invulnerable to airbursts; we have to groundburst a blast directly on the yard. 800 yards outside and you might as well not have bothered. The problem is those yards are not that big. So now we have a problem called CEP. This stands for Circle of Equal Probability (NOT Circular Error Probable which is a totally meaningless term invented by those of the intrepid birdmen). This is a measure of the accuracy of the missile and is the radius of the circle that will contain half the missiles aimed at the center of the circle. That means that half the inbounds will fall outside that circle. Now we have a second concept; the radius of total destruction, the radius within which everything is destroyed. Its astonishingly small; for a 100 kt groundburst its about 800 yards (now see where the marshalling yard came from).. Now if the RTD exceeds the CEP we're probably OK, if it doesn't (and in most cases it doesn't) we've got problems.

What all this ends up with is we have to fire multiple warheads at single targets in order to be sure of getting them. This is a complex calculation since the optimum number of warheads for Asylumville will depend on the attack pattern and priorities. But we'll eventually end up with number that represents the best compromise between destructive effects and warhead use. To estimate the effects on the area as a whole, take the demographic map, plot the event points, altitudes and yields on that map and apply the pie-cutter set for overpressure. The overpressure needed to destroy various types of building are public record (US houses are very very soft and vulnerable) so you know roughly what will be destroyed up to a given distance. Note that the blast circles will overlap in some places. Blast also isn't logical; ground irregularities will funnel it is some directions so that an area close in may be unscathed while others much further away will be flattened.

Now we have to get them there. Missiles are not terribly reliable and a lot can go wrong. A Rectal Extraction figure suggests that only about 60 percent of them will work when the blue touchpaper is ignited. So we have to add extra warheads to allow for the duds. To give a feel for the sort of numbers that we're talking about, the British calculated that they needed 32 warheads to give Moscow a terminal dose of instant sunrise. In other words, the British nuclear deterrent took down Moscow and that was it.

Key point here on the efficiency of defenses. In the 1950s, the UK V-bomber fleet was assigned to hit over 200 targets in the Western USSR. As the 50's turned into the 60's the ability of the V-bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace came under increasing doubt. The UK shifted to Polaris - one submarine at sea, 16 missiles, three warheads per. Total of 48 targets assigned. But the USSR started to install an anti-missile system that was reasonably capable against the early Polaris-type missiles. So the UK modified Polaris in a thing called Chevaline. this took one warhead from each missile and replaced the load with decoys - then targeted all 16 missiles onto Moscow. ONE target. In effect, the Soviet defenses had reduced the UK attack plan from 200 targets to one. In other words, it was 99.5 percent effective without firing a single shot (bad news for Moscow but great news for the other 199 cities with targets in them)

That's why so many devices are needed - the inventory evaporates very fast. Thats also why defenses like ABM are so important (and the urgency behind deploying the new US Missile Defense System). The defenses don't have to be very effective to work (although the new US system is looking good), its the complexity they throw into the planning process. As long as we can assume that if we get a warhead on its way to its target, that target is going to be hit, then planning is relatively easy and the results predictable. If, however, we can't make that guarantee; if we have to factor in a possibility - perhaps a good one - that the outbound warhead will be shot down, then planning becomes very uncertain. Now put yourself in the position of somebody planning a strike - do you wish to gamble your nation's change of survival on something that MIGHT work. Of course not. So Strategic Paralysis strikes again. A defense system doesn't have to work against an attack to be effective because it works on the minds of the people who make the decisions.
Raw

The Nuclear Game - The Attack And After

So far, when discussing nuclear weapons, we've always been working under the presumption that the historical situation applies and that we won't see a nuclear exchange. Lets look at the grim side of the equation now. The sirens are going and the National Emergency system is screaming its head off. What's the world going to be like in 25 minutes time? One thing we have to make clear before we start. We're talking about the biggest cataclysm in human history. When we say things like "doing well" or "doing badly", those terms are relative. Another thing is that most people's preconceptions about a nuclear war and its aftermath are wrong. Nevil Shute Norway did the world a great disservice when he wrote "On The Beach". The skewed viewpoint represented by that novel has been perpetuated ever since. A good modern example is the so-called "nuclear blast mapper" available on the internet that purportedly shows the effects of an initiation on an input home address. It doesn't, it doesn't even come close. A third preconception we have to get rid of is that there is such a thing as a limited nuclear exchange or a flexible response. There isn't now, never has been and never will be. The reasons why are primarily a C4I set of consideration but the inviolable rule is this "One Flies, They All Fly". Any exchange, no matter how limited, will escalate out of control until both participants have used all their devices.

Any country can be divided into two parts. The "A-country" is the big cities, the industrial and population centers and the resource concentration they represent. Big cities got to be that way because they are in desirable locations,near good ports, river crossings or mountain passes. When the city goes, so does the locations. The "B-country" is everything else. In effect the A-country represents big vulnerable collections of assets gathered into single spots. The B-country represents dispersed ranges of resources spread over large areas.This is a very important distinction. The relative value of the A-country and the B-country depends on the country and society involved. However one thing is constant, the support and supplies that the A-country needs to survive comes from the B-country. Given time, the B-country will rebuild the A-country. The survival of the B-country is, therefore, critical while the survival of the A-country might not be. Now, the primary asset of the B-country is its population; they are the ones who will generate resources from the B-country and turn them into product. So, the critical thing for a post nuclear environment is population. Save as much of that as we can and we're a jump ahead. That sounds eminently humanitarian. In reality it has awful consequences but we'll come to those later.

The extent to which the A-country can be rebuilt and the speed with which that can be achieved depends on the damage inflicted on the cities. One of the preconceptions that plague discussion of a nuclear war aftermath is the assumption that the cities will be totally destroyed write-offs but, in reality, the situation is by no means so simple. There's a few things that are important here. One is that big devices are a rarity. There are no 100 megaton devices, very few 25 and 10 megaton devices and not all that many 5 megaton weapons. The largest devices in widespread use are 1 megaton weapons and the majority of strategic weapons are in the 350 -150 kiloton bracket. 50 kiloton strategic weapons are quite common. The reason is quite simple. The destructive power of an explosion is distributed in three dimensions (actually four since the time component is very important) so the destructive power of a device is directly proportion to the cube root of its explosive power. Even worse, the destructive effects of a device are like many other distance related phenomena; they obey the inverse square law. Double the distance from the blast center and the effects are reduced by a factor of four. Therefore, a 1 megaton device is not 1,000 times as destructive as a 10 kiloton device, its ten times as such and those effects attenuate rapidly with distance. However, very big devices are MUCH heavier than small ones and consume disproportionate amounts of fissile material. Put all this together and its much more productive to have a large number of small devices than a small number of large ones.

Another is how the devices are used. The radius of destruction of nuclear devices is actually quite limited; this is a natural outgrowth of working on the inverse square law. Even with one of the "big" 1 megaton weapons, its fury is largely spent by the time the blast wave has reached ten miles from center. The smaller devices have lesser radii although the workings of the cube power rule mean that those radii are not as small as the difference in explosive power suggests. Nevertheless, the relatively limited effect of the devices shows that the general civilian presumption that ground zero for a nuclear strike on a city will be the city center is likely to be wrong. The devices will be targeted onto specific parts of the city that are judged to be of especial value. These may actually be in the suburbs or other peripheral areas.

So how does a nuclear device destroy things? The primary effects that result from the initiation of a device are (in no particular order) a light flash, a heat flash a blast concussion wave and a sleet of direct radiation. In fact, of these the last is of relatively little significance. The range of the radiation is very short and is further attenuated by the inverse square law. Its only significant within the areas where blast and heat are already lethal. If thermal blast and concussion have already reduced you to the size, shape and color of a McDonalds hamburger, irradiating you as well is incredibly superfluous. Thus the direct effects we are interested in are light, heat and blast and they do arrive in that order. The further an observer is from the point of initiation, the greater the gap between them. This is very important. The flash of light that will blind a victim close in serves to warn a potential victim further out. Once a few miles out from ground zero, the light flash tells the population that a device has gone off and its shadows show them sheltered areas from the next effects to arrive. If an area is shadowed from light, its shadowed from radiant heat as well. The heat flash is the first really destructive effect to hit. This is direct radiated thermal energy; like light it travels in straight lines. It will set anything inflammable on fire to a considerable distance from ground zero. Interestingly, it won't set non-flammable things on fire and, for example, must enter a house via windows etc before setting that house on fire. If the windows are masked (for example painted white), the heat flash is unlikely to set a brick-built house on fire (US-style frame houses are a different matter which is why it makes me uneasy living in one).

Last to arrive is blast. Unlike light and heat, both of which travel in straight lines, blast can be funneled by structures, deflected and masked. The windows we carefully painted white are history; smashed by the blast wave and its associated wave front of debris but they've done their job. The heat flash has gone. Houses are actually quite well designed to resist pressure from outside - its pressure from inside that gives them problems. Again, if you can keep the blast out you've got a good chance. Impossible close in to ground zero but progressively easier as we get further from that point. Closing the shutters on windows inside the house is good; even taping the glass in a lattice pattern is astonishingly helpful. Compared with military targets, civilian structures have relatively low damage resistance. In the jargon we've been looking at, this is called protection factor (PF) - most civilians can, with a few minutes warning give themselves a PF of around 40 - meaning they are 40 times more likely to survive than an unprotected civilian. In other words, even though the structures surrounding them are soft and weak, there is a lot they can do that will greatly increase their chance of survival. Note that - even when the sirens are going off, there is still a lot you can do that greatly increases your chances of surviving - provided you have a chance of surviving in the first place.

Lets imagine somebody has taken a serious dislike to your home town and decided to remove it. For all intents and purposes, the effects of initiation are generated in the center of the device initiation and travel outwards evenly in all dimensions to produce a perfectly symmetrical sphere or fireball. Now think of the geometry of this. If the device is initiated at ground level, a so-called ground burst, half of all that energy will go into the ground, scouring out a crater but effectively being wasted. More goes skywards. Some will be reflected down towards the earth but very little; effectively that energy too is wasted. The only energy that is actually useful is that produced in a narrow segment around the equator of the spherical ball produced by the initiation. Thus, for this type of attack ground bursts seem very inefficient. They are.

So what do we do about it? Again, think of the geometry. If we lift the detonation point into the air, the segment of the sphere that will spend its energy destroying valuable things is increased and the amount that scours out a crater gets smaller. Keep thinking along these lines and we reach a point where the sphere of the fireball doesn't quite touch the ground at all. In this case almost all the energy from the lower half of the fireball destroys valuable things and none goes to digging a crater. This is called a low airburst and it remains a low airburst as long as the altitude of the point of initiation of the device is less than the diameter of the fireball (ie there is a fireball radius between the bottom of the fireball and the ground). If the point of initiation of the device is at an altitude greater than the diameter of the fireball it's a high airburst. If the intention is to knock down cities, low airbursts are the most effective way of doing it.

We haven't mentioned fall-out. The dreaded stuff that destroys humanity.Well, there's a reason for that; the device has only just been initiated, there isn't any fall-out yet. Fall out is caused (mostly) by debris from the ground being sucked into the fireball, irradiated and spewed out of the top. This radioactive plume coalesces in the atmosphere and falls back to earth. It's a mix of isotopes of varying half lives. The most vicious of these isotopes have short half lives and are gone in a few hours (usually before the fallout makes it back to the ground). The milder ones can hang around for millennia but their effects are tolerable (speaking relatively again). The really dangerous ones are those that have a half life of between 5 and 6 years - these are long-lived enough to be seriously contaminating and hot enough to be dangerous. The worst is cobalt). Now the blast and heat throw debris outwards, where does the debris sucked into the fireball come from? Answer is the crater scoured in the ground by the energy from the device that went into said ground. But hang on, we've just discovered the best way to knock a city down is to use an airburst that doesn't crater the ground. Doesn't that mean no fallout? That's right, airbursts are relatively clean from a fallout point of view. They do generate some fallout from atmospheric dust and water vapor and a bit more (some very nasty) comes from the debris of the device but not as much as legend holds. This is especially the case since modern devices are very clean indeed and the debris from their initiation is far less than from the older designs.

All this means that dropping a nuclear device on a city doesn't necessarily destroy it. In fact, an acquaintance of mine, Peter Laurie, used to start off his lecture on such things by suggesting that 1 megaton device dropped on London would do only trivial damage to the city. After the lynch mob had been brought under control, he'd put a pie cutter on a demographic map of London and prove the point. We touched on how limited the damage caused by a one megaton device initiated over the City of London would be in Part Two. To be fair,that includes people and property slightly damaged but repairable. The catch is that London wouldn't have been hit by one but by several (in fact four 350 kiloton and two 1 megaton weapons in one particular attack plan). This would still leave a substantial proportion of the population and a larger proportion of their assets intact.

The implication of all this is that despite being subject to concentrated attack, the A-country isn't totally destroyed (although its society is) and remains a storehouse of people and goods. As an institution a big city is not viable for a variety of reasons but that is a long way from saying its simply flat, black and glowing in the dark. Its quite possible (depending on the attack patterns) that the big cities may be relatively unscathed.

So what's been going on in the B-country. One attack pattern is to hit the nuclear weapons stationed out there. These are mostly silo-based missiles. The only way to destroy those is to explode a device directly on top of the silo and scour out of the ground. In other words, a ground burst. And they create huge amounts of fallout. This means that a counter-force strike is inherently much more dangerous to the survival of the population than a counter city strike. Weird isn't it? A counter-value strike attacking the population in their home cities gives them a reasonable chance of survival while a counter-force strike restricting the target plan to military targets and rejecting a deliberate attack on the cities radically decreases that chance of survival. It's a point we've seen happening over and over again - when dealing with nuclear weapons we often end up going places we never thought we would. Thats because the logic behind nuclear weapons use and the effects of that logic is often counter-intuitive. It also demands careful though and examination of reality, not preconceptions or postures. The B-country also gets hit by counter-city strikes but the dispersed nature of the population reduces their direct effects.

OK so its over. The devices have ceased to arrive and eventually, probably after some 36 to 48 hours the all clear sounds. Notice another thing here; most accounts (The Day After for example) of a nuclear attack have a spasm lasting a few minutes and thats it. Sorry, Ain't So. The exchanges go on for days.

What happens now? From now on we're looking specifically at the USA. We have to get the B-country working again. As we touched on earlier, the cities are not viable places to live. Without their support infrastructure, they will become plague pits and charnel houses - just like the cities in 1632 . They have to be evacuated and the people distributed in the B-country to make up for losses there. In the B-country people are ambling around with Geiger counters plotting what's hot and what isn't. At this point life gets grim. We triage the population. One triage is condition. Who cannot be saved and will be left to die, who can only be saved with massive (and probably impractical) effort, those who can be saved with the means available now (the ones who get priority) and who will recover without treatment. On top of this is another triage. The population is prioritized according to need for protection. Pregnant women and children are top, young women of childbearing age second. Young men third, older men fourth, old women bottom. This is ruthless and brutal but its essential for survival. Given a choice between saving a young woman who can bear children and an old woman who cannot, we save the potential mother. We do the same with food. Food and water are checked for radioactivity. The clean food goes to the children and young women, the more contaminated food to the lower priority groups. That old woman? She gets the self-frying steaks.

In this situation the US has a terrific advantage over the rest of the world. Its called the Second Amendment. The B-country population is largely armed, sometimes quite heavily. They do exactly what Founding Fathers envisaged - provide a body of armed people whom the local authority can assemble to maintain order. (The Supreme Court may argue that interpretation of the Second Amendment but by now they are doing so with the people who wrote it). In a more general sense, post-holocaust fiction usually has gangs of outlaws preying on the defenseless citizenry. Interestingly that doesn't seem to happen. In disasters people tend to work together rather than against eachother (for example in US urban disasters Hells Angels biker gangs have made sterling contributions to relief efforts using their bikes and riding skills to get emergency supplies through to places others can't). While lawlessness and disorder do occur, the ease of forming a civilian militia (using the term properly here meaning something very much like the Sheriff?s Posse beloved of Westerns) brings that situation under control. Other countries are unlikely to be so fortunate.

So we're in a race. Can we rebuild the B-country so that its firstly self-sustaining without the services provided by the A-country while the stockpile of pre-attack assets survive. Can we reconstruct a working society fast enough so that we can feed enough people to keep going? Can the surviving women bear enough children (and survive doing so) to replace the death toll. For the loss won't stop with the attack. Diseases we consider trivial today, measles, chickenpox, influenza, will be mass killers. No medical treatment. Unless your lucky enough to be where some medical facilities have survived, a broken leg that gets infected is likely to be a death sentence. Its possible to look on this world as a 17th century US colonial environment and there's a lot of truth in that. The downside is that the colonial pioneers didn't have the decaying charnel houses of the cities to worry about. This is another key thing to bear in mind; many more people will die after a nuclear exchange and will die in it. Eric was quite correct in making his Doctor fear disease more than any other factor - its a thing that worried everybody looking at post holocaust (and now you know why the US has such well-equipped clinics tucked away in remote places).

Winning that race is vital. Lose and we're extinct. The population drops like a stone as disease, radiation and injury take their toll. Then, it should bottom out and start to recover. Teams of older men and infertile women go to the cities to recover what they can. The radiation levels continue to drop. Fortunately we don't have to worry about nuclear winter, that's been largely discredited (the atmospheric models that were used were far too simplistic and the reality seems to be we may actually get a more temperate and less changeable climate out of things - somebody once described it as a Nuclear Autumn). The ozone layer also won't be a problem - it'll regenerate fast enough and the effects of the bombs may actually be beneficial.

The ugly side of life continues. Abortion and contraception are likely to be highly illegal. We MUST have those babies. There will be more than enough parents who have lost their own (or have received too high a radiation dose to chance the FLK problem) to look after any that are unwanted. Women are enslaved by their reproductive systems again. Don't like that but there is nothing we can do about it. The social pressure on women to have children will be immense in both material and moral senses. Women who can have children get the best of everything, the cleanest and best food, the most comfortable housing, the most careful protection. Women who can have children but refuse to do so will be social outcasts (and in this sort of society to be an outcast is virtually a death sentence). We're likely to see a situation where women of childbearing age are "protected" by severe restrictions ("don't go outside the house, the radiation may harm your babies" gets abbreviated to "don't go outside") . This is a grim and disturbing picture; we take an old woman out of her house and throw her in the snow to provide shelter for a pregnant mother and her children - then lock her in. Newborn babies obviously damaged by radiation are likely to be killed on the spot. That may or may not be justifiable but I think its inevitable.

No electricity, limited medicine, almost no dentistry, no travel - we really are back to the middle ages. The fallout patterns and other things shift so its likely we'll see communities having citadels they can retreat to if necessary. Gasoline runs out cars will go; we're back to horses for transport. Fortunately we don't need factories to make more horses. Justice by the way is run by Judge Lynch. Don't expect to attack a woman and survive. Guns are also a declining asset. As the ammunition runs out we'll be making weapons in blacksmiths shops. Its interesting to see what the designers will come up with, using modern know-how with 17th century assets. We'll probably see bows and arrows come back into fashion - and that means metal body armor.

Eventually when conditions permit, our new society moves back to rebuild the A-country. It'll be a long, long time before there is another Federal Government(such things need technology to survive - a calculated guess is that it would take two centuries before a powerful central government evolved again - if it evolves again).

- End of lecture series -

Its interesting to note how much of the post-nuclear attack projections have carried through into 1632. In fact, I originally bought 1632 precisely because I was interested in how Eric's thoughts would fit with the studies that I knew had been done. The parallelism was very close indeed. 1632 quickly identified the crucial problem - the need to get population levels up so that there is enough of a workforce to do everything that needs to be done. Replace refugees from the war zone with refugees from the A-country and the situations are very close. In many ways, the situation described in 1632 is a lot closer to a post-nuclear attack scenario than the novels that purport to describe such situations directly.

The gearing down of technology is another issue where there are substantial parallels - although a lot of dispersal has been done and small towns have more strategic assets than they might think. There is a reason why the Pentagon places so many contracts with small, out-of-the-way companies. The basic logic is correct though; a post nuclear environment can support limited industrialization using steam and water power and can restore limited electricity.

1632 has another lesson for the post-nuclear environment; the critical importance of getting a working society up and running and getting trade links established. The normal run of post-holocaust novels forget that yet it was the thing most people studying the situation spent most time looking at. Mike Stearns got the point straight away - if he presented himself at a think-tank we'd hire him on the spot. I suspect he'd fit in quite well.

This is why a tactical use on an invading force--almost certainly American unless designer drugs and too many Clancy novels have broken your brain--concerns me more than strategic use. We know what happens in strategic exchanges. It fuckin sucks

# ? Jan 21, 2017 22:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia

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