7 ms·

Growing up in Germany it was weird to think if these weapons or similar ones were ever used it would probably mean that Germany and probably parts of Europe wou

Growing up in Germany it was weird to think if these weapons or similar ones were ever used it would probably mean that Germany and probably parts of Europe would be destroyed. Pretty scary.

saagarjha 7y ago
I’m fairly sure that if these weapons are used then a lot more than Germany would be destroyed.
- narag 7y ago
  That was a painful question. If soviet tanks had advanced through Europe, would the USA had responded with limited war or would had trigger the whole MAD thing? The answer wasn't as clear as with a ICBM attack, that was a much more irreversible decision.
  - madengr 7y ago
    FWIW the neutron bomb was developed for use against Soviet tanks.
  - DanCarvajal 7y ago
    The smaller tactical nukes were designed around the idea of being rapidly deploy-able area denial weapons to halt a Soviet land invasion.
  - simplicio 7y ago
    Note these were developed before MAD was really a thing. The Soviet nuclear arsenal in the early 50's was still pretty small, they had few bombers and ICBMs wouldn't be deployed till the end of the decade. On the other hand, they had a gigantic conventional army, and an obvious geographic advantage over the US in a convetional war fought in Europe. So US strategy was build around using their nuclear advantage to stop a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe before it could get out of Germany. Hence the development of tactical nuclear weapons like the M65, which seem bizarre to us today, as we're used to thinking about nuclear war in terms of MAD, but made sense (or at least, more sense) at the time.
- jdblair 7y ago
  The M65 and the Davy Crocket were designed to stop a Soviet tank invasion through the Fulda Gap[1]. NATO knew the Soviet army had a numbers advantage. Tactical nukes were developed to stop a mechanized invasion with a smaller force. The idea was that a hot war could start and both sides would avoid the use of strategic nukes, since this would be a civilization ending event. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap
- some_random 7y ago
  No, that's not how nuclear weapons work.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Generally, if you attack another country with nuclear weapons today I feel like you’d swiftly draw the world into a nuclear war?
    - some_random 7y ago
      This discussion is about the 1950s, not today. And no, that's not a guarantee.
perl4ever 7y ago
The Wikipedia page has a picture of the cannon with a nuclear explosion seven miles away. Isn't Germany larger than 7 miles wide, not to mention I thought it was part of Europe?
- smacktoward 7y ago
  If things had ever gotten to the point where atomic cannons were being fired in anger, there would have been a lot of nuclear weapons flying around.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    There are different grades to nuclear weaponry. A lot of the weapons in discussion here are tactical: something like the Davy Crockett can blow up only a city block... but more realistically would be used to wipe out part of a military base or maybe one or two ships. 100kT or less, Davy Crockett being ~10 Tons (or 0.01 kT) The "strategic nukes" on the other hand, are city-destroyers. 10Megatons or bigger, 100x or 10,000x larger than tactical nukes. ------- In effect: a tactical nuclear weapon is fired even if there are friendly forces nearby. In contrast, strategic nukes are fired when you want to kill everybody in an area. Even if a serious war started, no sane person would ever dare to touch strategic nukes. Once strategic nukes start flying, its pretty much the end of the world as we know it. The only response to a strategic nuke is to follow through with MAD. Tactical nukes are small enough that MAD may not be triggered. It would be an unprecedented escalation, but military generals around the world would quickly try to draw the line at "tactical nukes only". The problem is that no one has really drawn a hard line at what makes a nuke "strategic" or "tactical"... there's a smooth curve from 10 Tons (Davy Crockett) all the way up to Tsar Bomba (50,000,000 Tons). So there's a big fear that starting even with small tactical weapons would lead to a path of escalation towards the biggest nukes.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      The real problem is that if you hear a big boom and your communications fail, how do you know the Russians haven't launched at the US mainland? You're a commander of a small airfield in the Pacific and the last you heard from the US was that tactical nukes had been used in Europe. Now, communications are down. You have a bunch of planes ready to go, and if there's missiles or planes headed your way, you'll die pointlessly if you don't put them in the air. You have a letter from the President authorizing you to launch in this situation. Now what?
swilliamsio 7y ago
Another fun nuclear weapon that would have destroyed Germany is Blue Peacock. It was a series of nuclear mines placed across West Germany to be detonated if the Soviets invaded. They used chickens to keep the mines warm in cold winters.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Nuclear mines has to be the dumbest weapon idea I've heard of. Using nukes for scorched earth tactics would make the locals hate you forever regardless the outcome of the war. It would be a powerful propaganda tool for the other side.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    The general assumption was that if Russia ever had attacked then Germany would have been the battlefield. Nobody in Germany expected the country to survive in that case. It sort of would have made sense to try to stop the advance at any cost.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Even if the country doesn't survive, people will. One problem with nuclear mines is that they're unattended. If some crazy circumstance happens where the US loses control over the area, but it's not war, then you suddenly have a bunch of hidden nukes lying around that could detonate. Another problem is that if the Soviets ever found them then they could use them as effective propaganda. If even one of those mines goes off, then they could say that they're liberating the Germans from their American oppressors. After all, you don't nuke your own ally and a nuclear detonation is hard to hide.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Doesn't matter about propaganda if everyone is dead and there are no locals any more. That was really the defining philosophy of the Cold War nuclear threat escalation; total extermination of millions of civilians in as short a time as possible.
- 7y ago

Growing up in Germany it was weird to think if these weapons or similar ones were ever used it would probably mean that Germany and probably parts of Europe would be destroyed. Pretty scary.

saagarjha 7y ago

I’m fairly sure that if these weapons are used then a lot more than Germany would be destroyed.

narag 7y ago
That was a painful question. If soviet tanks had advanced through Europe, would the USA had responded with limited war or would had trigger the whole MAD thing? The answer wasn't as clear as with a ICBM attack, that was a much more irreversible decision.
- madengr 7y ago
  FWIW the neutron bomb was developed for use against Soviet tanks.
- DanCarvajal 7y ago
  The smaller tactical nukes were designed around the idea of being rapidly deploy-able area denial weapons to halt a Soviet land invasion.
- simplicio 7y ago
  Note these were developed before MAD was really a thing. The Soviet nuclear arsenal in the early 50's was still pretty small, they had few bombers and ICBMs wouldn't be deployed till the end of the decade. On the other hand, they had a gigantic conventional army, and an obvious geographic advantage over the US in a convetional war fought in Europe. So US strategy was build around using their nuclear advantage to stop a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe before it could get out of Germany. Hence the development of tactical nuclear weapons like the M65, which seem bizarre to us today, as we're used to thinking about nuclear war in terms of MAD, but made sense (or at least, more sense) at the time.
jdblair 7y ago
The M65 and the Davy Crocket were designed to stop a Soviet tank invasion through the Fulda Gap[1]. NATO knew the Soviet army had a numbers advantage. Tactical nukes were developed to stop a mechanized invasion with a smaller force. The idea was that a hot war could start and both sides would avoid the use of strategic nukes, since this would be a civilization ending event. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap
some_random 7y ago
No, that's not how nuclear weapons work.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Generally, if you attack another country with nuclear weapons today I feel like you’d swiftly draw the world into a nuclear war?
  - some_random 7y ago
    This discussion is about the 1950s, not today. And no, that's not a guarantee.

perl4ever 7y ago

The Wikipedia page has a picture of the cannon with a nuclear explosion seven miles away. Isn't Germany larger than 7 miles wide, not to mention I thought it was part of Europe?

smacktoward 7y ago
If things had ever gotten to the point where atomic cannons were being fired in anger, there would have been a lot of nuclear weapons flying around.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  There are different grades to nuclear weaponry. A lot of the weapons in discussion here are tactical: something like the Davy Crockett can blow up only a city block... but more realistically would be used to wipe out part of a military base or maybe one or two ships. 100kT or less, Davy Crockett being ~10 Tons (or 0.01 kT) The "strategic nukes" on the other hand, are city-destroyers. 10Megatons or bigger, 100x or 10,000x larger than tactical nukes. ------- In effect: a tactical nuclear weapon is fired even if there are friendly forces nearby. In contrast, strategic nukes are fired when you want to kill everybody in an area. Even if a serious war started, no sane person would ever dare to touch strategic nukes. Once strategic nukes start flying, its pretty much the end of the world as we know it. The only response to a strategic nuke is to follow through with MAD. Tactical nukes are small enough that MAD may not be triggered. It would be an unprecedented escalation, but military generals around the world would quickly try to draw the line at "tactical nukes only". The problem is that no one has really drawn a hard line at what makes a nuke "strategic" or "tactical"... there's a smooth curve from 10 Tons (Davy Crockett) all the way up to Tsar Bomba (50,000,000 Tons). So there's a big fear that starting even with small tactical weapons would lead to a path of escalation towards the biggest nukes.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    The real problem is that if you hear a big boom and your communications fail, how do you know the Russians haven't launched at the US mainland? You're a commander of a small airfield in the Pacific and the last you heard from the US was that tactical nukes had been used in Europe. Now, communications are down. You have a bunch of planes ready to go, and if there's missiles or planes headed your way, you'll die pointlessly if you don't put them in the air. You have a letter from the President authorizing you to launch in this situation. Now what?

swilliamsio 7y ago

Another fun nuclear weapon that would have destroyed Germany is Blue Peacock. It was a series of nuclear mines placed across West Germany to be detonated if the Soviets invaded. They used chickens to keep the mines warm in cold winters.

Mirioron 7y ago
Nuclear mines has to be the dumbest weapon idea I've heard of. Using nukes for scorched earth tactics would make the locals hate you forever regardless the outcome of the war. It would be a powerful propaganda tool for the other side.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  The general assumption was that if Russia ever had attacked then Germany would have been the battlefield. Nobody in Germany expected the country to survive in that case. It sort of would have made sense to try to stop the advance at any cost.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Even if the country doesn't survive, people will. One problem with nuclear mines is that they're unattended. If some crazy circumstance happens where the US loses control over the area, but it's not war, then you suddenly have a bunch of hidden nukes lying around that could detonate. Another problem is that if the Soviets ever found them then they could use them as effective propaganda. If even one of those mines goes off, then they could say that they're liberating the Germans from their American oppressors. After all, you don't nuke your own ally and a nuclear detonation is hard to hide.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Doesn't matter about propaganda if everyone is dead and there are no locals any more. That was really the defining philosophy of the Cold War nuclear threat escalation; total extermination of millions of civilians in as short a time as possible.
7y ago