51–60 of 124 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about nukes, but large conventional bombs have an unintuitive survival distance profile. Something like 30 units away you survive.
Why is that?
For Boston at least you only have to be 7-8 miles from ground zero to avoid most of the damage and due to the prevailing winds, most of the fallout (from a ground strike) would be towards the north east (an airburst doesn't seem to produce any appreciable fallout).
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…
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…
After ICBM silos, primary targets are (roughly in order):
1) Runways longer than 7000 feet, long enough for a B-52 to take off and land.
2) Naval bases, primarily those involved in the basing and maintenance of ballistic missile subs.
3) Command and control facilities of the U.S. military and government. This includes much of Washington D.C, the Pentagon, major government institutions like the CIA and NSA, and secondary military bases where leadership might relocate to.
4) Port facilities, which may become naval bases in a war.
5) Refineries and oil fields.
6) Concentration of heavy industry where military equipment might be made. Think of metro Detroit auto factories, or Caterpillar's factory, or Hendy Ironworks in Sunnyvale.
7) Office parks where significant brain trusts are located. You can bet that Livermore, Apple's headquarters, and the Googleplex are on a target list. (The Googleplex is actually in the blast radius for Moffett Field, so it may not need to be a separate target.) Also major universities.
8) Major city centers.
If you live in a suburban bedroom community, there is a very high chance of you surviving an initial attack unscathed. Nuke blast radiuses are often surprisingly small, relative to metro areas, and there is no reason for Russia to target a lightly-populated bedroom community 10 miles outside of the city.
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…
> Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? It depends on your objective if you want to incinerate a target, maximize damage or produce maximum fallout. Basically if you want to incinerate a small, hardened underground target you need to send a few nukes to have a high confidence level of success. If you want to damage a city and are OK with detonating in any part of t…
This might be true, but I've heard speculation that a surface burst would produce more fallout. Their reasoning is that fallout from an air burst would have considerably less dirt or debris so it would (supposedly) remain airborne for a longer period of time. On the other hand, a surface burst would darn near vaporize anything in the blast radius, and all that newly created radioactive debris would fall much quicker.
My sources could be incorrect, so if you've got something that indicates otherwise I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
However nice that sounds, that is unlikely to happen. History shows that targeting civilians is by far the most effective to make the opposition concede.
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.
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.
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.
They have been (I mean, aside from the deliberate atrocities) but not, I think, intentionally. Ironically, I think it is because Putin’s claims of closeness of the Russian and Ukrainian people aren't wrong, and the Russian conscripts largely shoved into this war don't really have any desire to kill Ukrainian’s for Putin’s murky purposes.
That's why they begged Kazakhstan for troops, why they sent Chechen kill squads after Zelenskyy, why they are now recruiting in Syria, etc. The material condition of the Russian Army isn't great, but the human component doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about the war, either.
I imagine having access to the user analytics of this site is one of the most anxiety-inducing states of being known to man.
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…
The US defense establishment believes the literal nuclear bombing of cities is an unlikely strategy. Russian first-strike strategy involves the usage of nuclear weapons for their Electromagnetic Pulse generating effects. The ability to destroy electricity delivery, generation, and electronic devices is just as likely to destroy or render ineffective an adversary's ability to respond as outright nuclear holocaust.
This document mentions that the use of high-voltage EMP bursts renders our nuclear arsenal vulnerable- those in silos, those in planes, and those in submarines if they are not sufficiently hardened against these attacks.
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.
On the other hand, the RS-28 is the Russian state of the art now, and is probably as deadly as the Tsar, but very practical. However, it is yet to see if it will work as advertised.
It was supposed to be test launched (hopefully not with real warheads!) in 2022. So it's unlikely it will matter if there's nuclear war this year.
I'm really not sure this gives Russia any advantage over the US though, or over what it's replacing. There's already enough nukes to obliterate both sides, no? Just launch more of the existing ones.