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Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia, UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons in th

Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia, UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons in the 20th century.

DougWebb 9y ago
Uh.... the number of people inside the blast radius?
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Ding ding, we have a winner.
tyingq 9y ago
Population density near the blast sites? Not that they all did the right thing, and real people were absolutely affected. But there is a significant difference.
- wahern 9y ago
  FWIW, declassified intelligence purporting to show Soviet nuclear targets in Australia suggest that large cities would have been spared direct strikes. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secrets-out-soviets-did-not-target-cities-20120805-23ny1.html Various other outlets and blogs at the time also made the point that, generally, both the Soviets and Americans avoided population centers as well as (IIRC) decapitation strikes.[1] They focused on strategic military targets, primarily those related to first and retaliatory nuclear strike capabilities. Basically air bases, naval bases (especially submarine bases), and related infrastructure--anything that directly supported the launch of nuclear weapons. Continental Europe, especially Germany, was an exception because of expectations of immediate ground warfare and the likelihood of tactical nukes. But arguably that's less an exception and more a variation of the same logic. [1] Decapitation means you've nobody to negotiate with in a timely manner, ensuring the enemy will resort to unleashing every last nuclear weapon at their disposal. Neither side was stupid enough to have unleashed everything at once. All scenarios I've read described an escalation in launches over 1 or 2 days, sometimes longer, with opportunities for negotiated or even unilateral ceasefires.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Sure, but there's still a very stark difference between the population around a military base and some remote atoll, artic outpost, remote desert etc. Most US air and naval bases are in close proximity to population centers.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dingaling 9y ago
    > suggest that large cities would have been spared direct strikes That's an Australian assessment of what they expected the Soviets to do in the 1980s. The actual behaviour largely depends on the specific war-plan and epoch. Actual Soviet documents from the 1950s show the Soviets planned to 'troll' the West by nuking a few non-Central-Front cities, such as Darwin or Perth, and assessing the response. Would the USA or NATO reply in kind, or back down? > generally, both the Soviets and Americans avoided population centers as well as (IIRC) decapitation strikes Not at all. Have a read at these US targets from one of the 1950s SIOPs: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl... While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated “Population.” In later years the targetting turned more towards counterforce ( military targets ) as the CEP of missiles crept down into the hundreds of metres. But before the mid-1980s that simply wasn't feasible
    - gambiting 9y ago
      If you read "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser it provides further proof for that. At the height of cold war, US had over 400 missiles ready to strike Moscow directly, purely because of lack of coordination between different forces(so US Army wouldn't share their attack plan with US Navy or the Airforce, so combined they would have launched over 400 missiles at Moscow, a complete overkill).
      - mikeash 9y ago
        The British also had about a few dozen warheads and several hundred decoys aimed at Moscow starting in the early 1980s. This was actually pretty sensible: the British wanted an independent deterrent, and with a small force, their solution was to deter the USSR by making sure Moscow would be destroyed. The large number of warheads and decoys was needed to guarantee success against the Soviet missile defense system around Moscow. Smaller players with their own arsenals can complicate things considerably. A major problem when trying to decode nuclear war strategy is that the rational thing to do after the missiles have started flying is different from the rational thing to threaten beforehand. If your goal is nuclear war, you want to threaten the enemy with complete and utter destruction from which they will never recover. Once it starts, you want to focus on the enemy's ability to attack you further, and probably ignore the enemy's civilian population and infrastructure. But it's hard to present the "total destruction" option as a credible threat unless you actually set up your forces to go through with it.
mikeash 9y ago
Here's a realistic look at what an all-out nuclear war in 1988 might have been like: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html Spoiler alert: about four fifths of Americans end up dead, and about one third of all humans on Earth. The survivors contend with famine and plague on a scale never before seen. Most of the world's industrial capacity is destroyed. I find it fairly easy to distinguish that scenario from the world we live in, personally.
- mlindner 9y ago
  That's pretty fake and assumes a lot of capabilities the USSR never had. Satellite mounted nuclear weapons, anti-ICBM missiles, ground to space lasers, "killer satellites", etc never existed. I think the writer enjoys pro-USSR fantasies.
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    > Satellite mounted nuclear weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment... > anti-ICBM missiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_sy... > ground to space lasers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra-3 > "killer satellites" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrebitel_Sputnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrebitel_Sputnik
  - mikeash 9y ago
    The Soviets had and the Russians still have anti-ICBM missiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_sy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s... Killer satellites were developed starting in the 60s and deployed operationally in 1991. It seems reasonable to think that some pre-operational capability might have existed in 1988: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html I'm not sure where the nuke satellites and lasers came from. When it comes to answering the question of "what would a post-war world look like?" the only significant system out of these is the nuke satellites causing an EMP. That could (and probably would) have been just as easily done with standard ICBMs so I don't think it changes the answer very much.

Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia, UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons in the 20th century.

DougWebb 9y ago

Uh.... the number of people inside the blast radius?

craftyguy 9y ago
Ding ding, we have a winner.

tyingq 9y ago

Population density near the blast sites? Not that they all did the right thing, and real people were absolutely affected. But there is a significant difference.

wahern 9y ago
FWIW, declassified intelligence purporting to show Soviet nuclear targets in Australia suggest that large cities would have been spared direct strikes. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secrets-out-soviets-did-not-target-cities-20120805-23ny1.html Various other outlets and blogs at the time also made the point that, generally, both the Soviets and Americans avoided population centers as well as (IIRC) decapitation strikes.[1] They focused on strategic military targets, primarily those related to first and retaliatory nuclear strike capabilities. Basically air bases, naval bases (especially submarine bases), and related infrastructure--anything that directly supported the launch of nuclear weapons. Continental Europe, especially Germany, was an exception because of expectations of immediate ground warfare and the likelihood of tactical nukes. But arguably that's less an exception and more a variation of the same logic. [1] Decapitation means you've nobody to negotiate with in a timely manner, ensuring the enemy will resort to unleashing every last nuclear weapon at their disposal. Neither side was stupid enough to have unleashed everything at once. All scenarios I've read described an escalation in launches over 1 or 2 days, sometimes longer, with opportunities for negotiated or even unilateral ceasefires.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Sure, but there's still a very stark difference between the population around a military base and some remote atoll, artic outpost, remote desert etc. Most US air and naval bases are in close proximity to population centers.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dingaling 9y ago
  > suggest that large cities would have been spared direct strikes That's an Australian assessment of what they expected the Soviets to do in the 1980s. The actual behaviour largely depends on the specific war-plan and epoch. Actual Soviet documents from the 1950s show the Soviets planned to 'troll' the West by nuking a few non-Central-Front cities, such as Darwin or Perth, and assessing the response. Would the USA or NATO reply in kind, or back down? > generally, both the Soviets and Americans avoided population centers as well as (IIRC) decapitation strikes Not at all. Have a read at these US targets from one of the 1950s SIOPs: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl... While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated “Population.” In later years the targetting turned more towards counterforce ( military targets ) as the CEP of missiles crept down into the hundreds of metres. But before the mid-1980s that simply wasn't feasible
  - gambiting 9y ago
    If you read "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser it provides further proof for that. At the height of cold war, US had over 400 missiles ready to strike Moscow directly, purely because of lack of coordination between different forces(so US Army wouldn't share their attack plan with US Navy or the Airforce, so combined they would have launched over 400 missiles at Moscow, a complete overkill).
    - mikeash 9y ago
      The British also had about a few dozen warheads and several hundred decoys aimed at Moscow starting in the early 1980s. This was actually pretty sensible: the British wanted an independent deterrent, and with a small force, their solution was to deter the USSR by making sure Moscow would be destroyed. The large number of warheads and decoys was needed to guarantee success against the Soviet missile defense system around Moscow. Smaller players with their own arsenals can complicate things considerably. A major problem when trying to decode nuclear war strategy is that the rational thing to do after the missiles have started flying is different from the rational thing to threaten beforehand. If your goal is nuclear war, you want to threaten the enemy with complete and utter destruction from which they will never recover. Once it starts, you want to focus on the enemy's ability to attack you further, and probably ignore the enemy's civilian population and infrastructure. But it's hard to present the "total destruction" option as a credible threat unless you actually set up your forces to go through with it.

mikeash 9y ago

Here's a realistic look at what an all-out nuclear war in 1988 might have been like: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html Spoiler alert: about four fifths of Americans end up dead, and about one third of all humans on Earth. The survivors contend with famine and plague on a scale never before seen. Most of the world's industrial capacity is destroyed. I find it fairly easy to distinguish that scenario from the world we live in, personally.

mlindner 9y ago
That's pretty fake and assumes a lot of capabilities the USSR never had. Satellite mounted nuclear weapons, anti-ICBM missiles, ground to space lasers, "killer satellites", etc never existed. I think the writer enjoys pro-USSR fantasies.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  > Satellite mounted nuclear weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment... > anti-ICBM missiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_sy... > ground to space lasers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra-3 > "killer satellites" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrebitel_Sputnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrebitel_Sputnik
- mikeash 9y ago
  The Soviets had and the Russians still have anti-ICBM missiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_sy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s... Killer satellites were developed starting in the 60s and deployed operationally in 1991. It seems reasonable to think that some pre-operational capability might have existed in 1988: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html I'm not sure where the nuke satellites and lasers came from. When it comes to answering the question of "what would a post-war world look like?" the only significant system out of these is the nuke satellites causing an EMP. That could (and probably would) have been just as easily done with standard ICBMs so I don't think it changes the answer very much.