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Re: Nukemap

#111

Post by miki_tyler »

JohnBooty wrote: post #99
miki_tyler wrote: post #98

The Russians don't have nukes. The only reason to keep nukes in your arsenal is for deterrence. Now, bear with me on this - you don't need to have functional nukes for deterrence, just pretend they are in working order. Now, in a corrupt kleptocratic organization like the Russian armed forces, what stops the people at the top to steal as much as possible when those weapons are not supposed to be ever used?

I agree completely, except for the part where you are 100% sure they don't have any (working) nukes. I think it's possible, even likely that their nuclear arsenal is in shambles and much is non-functional. A cash-strapped regime like Russia has surely made the same observation as you and realized that they can reap all of the deterrence benefits without actually spending any money to maintain nuclear readiness. Unlik…

I don't think they have nukes. At the same time I don't think we should risk WW3 to find out either.

Re: Nukemap

#112

Post by tablespoon »

javajosh wrote: post #17
excalibur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing there would be several aimed at each city of any size, and the targeted locations would be spread out a bit to maximize impact. If you're conducting an all-out nuclear assault you're probably not pulling any punches.

I was going to say there aren't enough warheads to target every city because: >[The] United States and Russia have the vast majority of nuclear weaps, with 4,804 and 4,480 warheads stockpiled respectively. There are approximately 1,861 nukes spread over the rest of the world, between China, Israel, the U.K, Pakistan, and India. France has the largest number of nukes after the U.S. and Russia. [0] However, there are o…

> However, there are only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. [1]

Only using an definition of "city" that's based on arbitrary political boundaries:

> This list refers only to the population of individual municipalities within their defined limits; the populations of other municipalities considered suburbs of a central city are listed separately, and unincorporated areas within urban agglomerations are not included. Therefore, a different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metropolitan area populations.

Metropolitan statistical areas are probably the right thing to count, and there are 358 of those over 100k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) in the US. Since US urban areas are pretty sprawling, you'd probably need multiple strikes to fully destroy most of the large ones.

When I way playing with nukemap, it looked like with a single air-burst bomb aimed the the urban core, the destruction of wooden buildings wouldn't even make it to the inner-ring suburbs.

Re: Nukemap

#113

Post by hutrdvnj »

joes_hk wrote: post #84
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of nukes are "counterforce" - they're targeted against military targets, primarily the enemy's own nuclear arsenal. Strategic reasoning for this is pretty simple: only by destroying the enemy's weapons can you prevent the destruction of your own citizens, and destroying the enemy's citizens is pretty cold comfort if all of yours are dead. I've heard that each Minuteman 3 silo in the U.S. has multipl…

Is there a reason why Russia should target America before targeting Europe? Wouldn't it have strategical advantages for them to target NATO bases in Poland or Turkey and/or Germany?

It makes more "sense" for Russia to destroy as many nukes as possible in case of a nuclear war first strike. Poland, Turkey and Germany doesn't have many nukes to speak of.

Re: Nukemap

#114

Post by hutrdvnj »

sdoering wrote: post #56
lbotos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but isn't the problem "second strike": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike With nukes, you gotta stop your nuclear armed opponent from killing you second, first.

With nuclear weapons you know that getting all enemy weapons is a slim chance. So you aim for maximum destruction of the enemy. If I had to decide on targets I would go for max destruction in terms of lives. In the initial impact and in the long term. So the biggest cities, nuclear power plants, water supply, food production. As said when usi g this option I don't expect my people to survive as well.

Well if you go for maximum number of lives instead of nukes, then the nuclear answer to russia will likely be so strong that it really doesn't matter.

Re: Nukemap

#115

Post by joes_hk »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #113
joes_hk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason why Russia should target America before targeting Europe? Wouldn't it have strategical advantages for them to target NATO bases in Poland or Turkey and/or Germany?

It makes more "sense" for Russia to destroy as many nukes as possible in case of a nuclear war first strike. Poland, Turkey and Germany doesn't have many nukes to speak of.

There are american nuclear weapons at least in Germany. So this could be a target, couldn't it?

Re: Nukemap

#116

Post by hutrdvnj »

joes_hk wrote: post #115
hutrdvnj wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes more "sense" for Russia to destroy as many nukes as possible in case of a nuclear war first strike. Poland, Turkey and Germany doesn't have many nukes to speak of.

There are american nuclear weapons at least in Germany. So this could be a target, couldn't it?

Sure, but as far as I know they are all at one spot and there's "only" 20 of them. So russia needs basically one nuke to disable the nuclear treat from Germany. In comparison the US has thousands nukes all over the country and nukes with tenfold power.

Re: Nukemap

#117

Post by ben_w »

geenew wrote: post #107
ben_w wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what I meant, those were linked directly by the bit of Wikipedia I quoted. I don’t know the implications of having these as a payload. What size warheads can be mounted in this particular missile’s MIRV option? Are they typically all warheads or are most decoys? If multiple, are they likely to be redundantly targeting the same location, or is this used to target multiple locations from a single launch? The Wikipe…

IANANWEONWP, but: For the number of decoys vs warheads, I /think/ the only real design limit is the throw-weight of the missile and volume of the fairing. This[0] has slightly more information on decoys. The 'it depends' remark is based on the fact that, AFAIK, the choice of decoy:bomb ratio depends on what the attacker thinks they need. Since the US ABM stuff is currently just for very limited strikes, I would guess…

Thanks :)

Re: Nukemap

#118

Post by [deleted] »

tablespoon wrote: post #3

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…

[deleted]

Re: Nukemap

#119

Post by hollerith »

agency wrote: post #75
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of nukes are "counterforce" - they're targeted against military targets, primarily the enemy's own nuclear arsenal. Strategic reasoning for this is pretty simple: only by destroying the enemy's weapons can you prevent the destruction of your own citizens, and destroying the enemy's citizens is pretty cold comfort if all of yours are dead. I've heard that each Minuteman 3 silo in the U.S. has multipl…

"Fun" fact: Seattle is 20 miles (as the crow flies) from Naval Base Kitsap which is the home port for all of the pacific fleet of Trident ballistic missile submarines.

From which I conclude that unless they make the mistake at looking at one of the explosions, in which case they'll be blinded (probably temporarily, but I'm not sure) or they're injured by flying glass, Seattle residents will not be immediately killed in an attack on Kitsap, but if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction or it rains at the wrong time they could easily be killed by the fallout.

Re: Nukemap

#120

Post by hollerith »

JohnBooty wrote: post #91
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of nukes are "counterforce" - they're targeted against military targets, primarily the enemy's own nuclear arsenal. Strategic reasoning for this is pretty simple: only by destroying the enemy's weapons can you prevent the destruction of your own citizens, and destroying the enemy's citizens is pretty cold comfort if all of yours are dead. I've heard that each Minuteman 3 silo in the U.S. has multipl…

Do you have a source for this? It seems (coldly and terrifyingly) sound from logical perspective, at least to the extent that "logical" is a word that can be applied to something that threatens the entire human race. But I'm curious how much if any official doctrine has become public. If you live in a suburban bedroom community, there is a very high chance of you surviving an initial attack unscathed. One might imagi…

>Do you have a source for this?

I don't have sources, but the list is very similar to the list I would write. I have no work experience in the field, but since the end of the cold war, my probability of nuclear war has always been much higher than most English-language commentators, so I've been keeping an ear out for information.

I would add that runways over 7000 feet would be such a high priority that even straight stretches of highway longer than that (which can be used as improvised runways) will probably be targeted (and some sections of the US interstate highway system built in the 1950s were made straight precisely so that they could be used as runways during a war).

Also, it is at least possible that they would attack the US, but not with everything they got (at least at first) and if they do that, then oil refineries would be much higher on my list than on the list in the grandparent comment because if they do decide to attack, it is probably because they (the leaders of Russia's security apparatus) are about to lose power in which case it is likely that they blame the sanctions the West has just imposed on them as the primary cause of their immanent loss of power -- and their attacking our oil refineries will have an effect on the US much like very severe sanctions would.

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