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Nukemap

nukemap.org

41–50 of 124 posts

Re: Nukemap

#41
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast. If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout…

Each to their own but I have never understood this way of thinking. I have kids, I would want them to survive and to have a chance at life even if its not the shiny modern one. I would also want them to have kids and so on. Life would obviously be hard but it would still be life. Death comes soon enough for everyone anyway. Obviously the best outcome is no nukes at all.

[deleted]

Re: Nukemap

#42
I imagine having access to the user analytics of this site is one of the most anxiety-inducing states of being known to man.

Re: Nukemap

#43

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

> Well Russia has about 6000 nukes

But closer to 1500 operationally deployed, and if they should launch any significant number of them, a substantial portion of the rest of the operationally deployed nukes in the world will be landing in Russia targeted and destroying any capacity they have to use any they have that weren't ready and deployed in the first strike.

Which is why if they use any significant number, even as a first strike, it will largely be for a counterforce strike doing the same thing to other nuclear powers, because who wants to be in a bunker without usable nukes when the guys you just nuked are in their bunker with usable nukes.

Re: Nukemap

#44

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

As Ukrainian, who was very (pleasantly) surprised at ineptitude of Russian military I changed my mind about nuclear war recently...

Of course hindsight is always 20/20, but even before the war I had the arguments with some of my friends that modern Russia cannot produce anything at a modern world class level. How it can be possible if they pay 40k RUB to Senior Engineers working in military or space organizations, while you can get 90k RUB working as a "Sales Consultant" in electronics store. Add to this the record levels of corruption; inept leadership being assigned because of their political affiliation, rather than knowledge and experience (just check Rogozin) and you will find hard not to agree with me.

This incompetence manifests itself at all levels - starting from glorious leader Putin, who managed to convert pro-Russian Ukraine into the "NATO state" in less than 20 years; secret agents, who cannot kill a person without leaving a radioactive trace throughout the whole country and the success of "military operation" we see now.

Anyhow, obviously I'd prefer not to test my assumptions, but I believe that Russia has no hypersonic missiles - they planned to have it in production in summer, 2022 and we know what it means in Kremlin-speak. So far it's all cartoons, like their new 5th-gen aircrafts and MBTs. And I am quite confident that the vast majority of their warheads and missiles are long gone...

Re: Nukemap

#45

Common pet peeve with this site: Most people trying to share a scary screenshot will choose the largest one (Tsar Bomba 100t), of which 1 operation one was ever created, and that one has already been detonated. It's also not at all a practical bomb that would be used in practice.

Unless the site broke there wasn't much smaller a radius when I selected that one vs. a 5t one.

The difference when dropping it on Brussels is 3rd degree burns over half of Belgium (26000 km²) vs. just a bit further than Brussels' suburbs (2000 km²).

That's something like 8 million people directly affected vs. 2 million people, which seems quite significant.

Re: Nukemap

#46
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast. If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout…

Each to their own but I have never understood this way of thinking. I have kids, I would want them to survive and to have a chance at life even if its not the shiny modern one. I would also want them to have kids and so on. Life would obviously be hard but it would still be life. Death comes soon enough for everyone anyway. Obviously the best outcome is no nukes at all.

I think the difference is I don’t have kids. I would like to think I want kids but there is no way I can afford having kids especially given I’m not sure if I can even afford to retire.

I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.

Re: Nukemap

#47
post #32

I don't know how much of what I saw online was Ukraine propaganda. But the Russian military seems to be in bad shape. Almost nothing of the new stuff they paraded all these years is used in Ukraine. Some people argued that it's a smart ploy, others say they simply don't have the technology in amounts that are enough for a war. It makes me think, how many nukes does Russia actually have? How many are usable? How many…

It is very much possible that they are "going easy" on Ukraine. Unlike the western media reports, they are clearly targeting strategic locations to bomb( with some civilian casualties ) and they are not advancing faster than they could.

To summarise, They may not be in bad shape, they seem to be reluctant to use force against their neighbour.

Re: Nukemap

#48
post #19

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast. If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout…

Survival instincts are strong tho, suicide would be a lot more prevalent in war zones and heavily impoverished regions if the will to live didn't most often prevail on terrible living situations. As horrifying as the thought of a nuclear collapse of civilization would be, I'm sure there would be something worth living for on the other side - assuming you're somewhere that remains remotely livable and don't die a week later from body melting radiation poisoning or from famine within two months... which I guess is likely in most places, maybe it's my non-urban Canadian bias and irrational optimism (I'm doubtful this scenario equates a carpet-atomic-bombing of Earth's surface) speaking.

Re: Nukemap

#49

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

It probably depends on how the war escalated to a nuclear exchange and whether it's a first strike or a second strike. In a first strike, the goal would be to take out the enemy nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible ("counterforce") to prevent retaliation, so in that case we would hope that all or almost all of the warheads would be targeted at remote missile bases. But you need a large number of accurate missiles to do that, so if you don't have those you're stuck targeting cities ("countervalue") for deterrence.

It doesn't seem like the U.S, Russia, or China have a hardline commitment to any particular response. If there are tit-for-tat attempts at limited escalation and deescalation, they need to be flexible.

Regardless, you need multiple warheads per target for reliability reasons, so if there's a massive nuclear war, you can probably expect a quick death rather than a slow one.

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