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Do you really believe China has enough nukes to take out most of the USA's infrastructure? Fab facilities would be waaaay down the list of targets. China's goa

Do you really believe China has enough nukes to take out most of the USA's infrastructure? Fab facilities would be waaaay down the list of targets. China's goal has been to maintain a nuclear deterrent (make it not worthwhile to strike China) rather than an offensive capability. if nukes flew then China would likely fragment into many separate countries: its centralized command structure would be destroyed and local politics would be the rule. Look at China's history to see its future after a nuclear war: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+how+many++kingdoms https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+how+many++kingdoms

kragen 5y ago
The PRC is estimated to have some 350 warheads, enough to land one or two on every US city of 100k population or more, killing about a third of the population. That's not nearly enough to prevent a retaliatory strike, but it seems like a fairly effective deterrent, and Intel's and TI's US fabs would definitely be out of commission, even if they weren't targets, until after the Mexican Army or whoever moved in to mop up the leftovers. It's hard to tell what you intend by your DDG link, but perhaps you are suggesting that, in the case of nuclear war, China will effectively revert to the Warring States Period of 2500 years ago. Is that really your intention? What would the US look like if it were returned to 2500 years ago, before the rise of the Anasazi and the Mound Builders, before the Olmec invented writing? A much more likely outcome than this sort of quasi time travel is that either a post-nuclear US or a post-nuclear China would look like nothing ever seen before in human history, more closely resembling the world in the immediate aftermath of the Chicxulub impact.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  China was ruled by rival warlords far more recently than 2,500 years ago, most recently from about 1916 to 1928 (officially, though some warlords continued to hold sway in isolated regions well into the 1940s). Strong central government collapses -> country fractures into regions controlled by warlords -> new strong central government arises. China has seen that movie many, many times in its history.
  - kragen 5y ago
    It's not clear to me that this is an insightful framing of the situation. Certainly it is true that in China, as anywhere else, the degree of political autonomy accorded to regions of different sizes varies; at times governance is more centralized, and at other times it is less so. Borders shift over time, as do the particular powers accorded to local leaders. Similarly, when the strong central government in Mycenaean Greece collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece fractured into "regions controlled by warlords." Then one of those warlords, Alexandros, conquered Persia, most of the Mediterranean, Turkey, much what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and part of India. Then he died, and his empire fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Roman Republic conquered most of the same region (not coincidentally becoming a Greek-speaking empire in the process), plus part of Britain and most of Western Europe, and fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Holy Roman Empire arose and reunified a lot of those regions, at least in name (arguably, much like the later Zhou) and then fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then Napoleon arose and reunified a lot of those regions, including parts of Russia that Rome and the Holy Roman Empire had never reached, but that didn't last long, and the warlords retook control from Napoleon pretty quickly. Even the Bourbons got restored! Then Hitler arose and reunified a lot of those regions, but his "country" fractured into regions controlled by warlords even more quickly. Then the European Union arose and reunified a lot of those same regions again by winning the loyalty of local warlords like Charles de Gaulle, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Joseph Luns. Or, alternatively, NATO did. Or the UN. And you can tell a similar story about Russia. You could reasonably object that NATO, the EU, the UN, and the Holy Roman Empire aren't or weren't "strong central governments" as we know them today. Well, they weren't Westphalian states, it's true. But neither were any of the reigns of Chinese emperors we're talking about here. And, although if you go to overseas Chinese school you might be taught a simple linear succession of dynasties, the truth in China is much more complicated, just as the truth about western Europe is much more complicated than my linear version above. What does that have to do with what Russia would do if the nukes started flying? Does the collapse of the Kievan Rus' in the face of the Golden Horde mean that Russia's command structure would collapse in the 20 minutes needed to launch a counterattack? The Scythian king Ateas, from what is now Russia, fought in his dotage and fell in battle with Philip of Macedon in 00339 BCE, and his empire collapsed. Should we thus infer that his successor Vladimir Putin will remain in power too long and make Russia weak, easy pickings for a new conqueror? Such inferences are obviously ridiculous.
- musingsole 5y ago
  You cripple your argument with your own. The US can't return to a 2500 year old structure; it's not old enough to have that history. Which is a strength. China has further to fall than the US. That old history is still history. The US would cobble together into something more reminiscent of something later into history by virtue of a shorter memory span...whether or not that is beneficial in this hypothetical future is a different question.
  - kragen 5y ago
    The People's Republic of China isn't 2500 years old either. Your metaphors about strength, falling, shoe repair, structures, and crippling have no predictive power, being only metaphors. It's true that people in the US don't know what happened there 2500 years ago, but people in China don't know much of what happened there 2500 years ago either (partly the fault of Qin Shi Huang), and in either place, there's no particular reason to expect it to happen again, other than metaphorical fuzzy thinking about falling and cobbling, and the general tendency of human societies to do things that human societies can do instead of things they can't. Even if post-apocalyptic China were seized with a historical-reenactment fervor and Sima Qian were the new bestselling author, the material conditions of production today are quite different from those that prevailed in the Bronze Age. People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. At least some surveillance satellites will surely remain in orbit. Semiarticulated trucks with tank escorts could still carry materiel to battlefronts orders of magnitude faster than porters with wheelbarrows or even the Grand Canal. The whole scenario is just nonsense.
    - giardini 5y ago
      kragen says "People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. " shortwave radios? With no electrical power, no batteries? "smelt iron" with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes? Hedge your bets and buy a couple of horses tomorrow. [Bad news: I can imagine your neighbors' queries: "Hey, Bing, what's with the sudden interest in horses, eh? You aren't worried about some crazy sort of apocalypse, are ya? Whaddaya gonna do - ride off into the sunset or sumthin'?" Good news: you can eat a horse!] "Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local CCP leaders. But it would be easier and more satisfying to kill them by hand. "surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why? Where are the encryption codes? Most CCP command structures would be smoked. "Semi-articulated trucks with tank escorts" is a laugh - with no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads. "to battlefields"? What battlefields? Oh, of course, so they can fight the Chinese living in the next valley. But before they do that, how about getting something to eat? Maybe you could roll up to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken in your 'semi-articulated truck'!8-)) "The whole scenario is just nonsense." - finally you got one right! What you envision _is_ nonsense. The point of my post was that for a post-apocalyptic China, geography is destiny. The country would be fragmented socially and politically out of necessity. The most likely political structure to result is one that supports a more primitive infrastructure. China would fall into a number of separate independent regions. The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them.
kragen 5y ago
Responding to this pathetic trolling was a mistake: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174525 and I would have known better if I'd looked at giardini's posting and commenting history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174521
- giardini 5y ago
  Bad News: Engaging kragen in plain conversation was my error. Had I known he would prove a jackass (e.g., here he using "cancel culture" methods to smear my statements on this thread by suggesting readers pause to read all my past posts on HN!) I would have never posted on this thread. But as his own internet posting history shows, he seems quick to anger and, while quite well-schooled in some respects, he is unable to recognize that there's something seriously inherently flawed in his thought processes. And before that flaw, whatever it is, can fully reveal itself, he goes off screaming "troll!". I'm not in bad company, apparently kragen also said some very bad things about Eric Naggum, although kragen raged after Naggum died (wish he'd done the same for me, but...) And the comparison is unfair in that I'm neither so talented nor so demanding as Naggum was. And I love a good laugh. Good News: this is the first such person I've met on HN so I think such is a rarity.

kragen 5y ago

The PRC is estimated to have some 350 warheads, enough to land one or two on every US city of 100k population or more, killing about a third of the population. That's not nearly enough to prevent a retaliatory strike, but it seems like a fairly effective deterrent, and Intel's and TI's US fabs would definitely be out of commission, even if they weren't targets, until after the Mexican Army or whoever moved in to mop up the leftovers. It's hard to tell what you intend by your DDG link, but perhaps you are suggesting that, in the case of nuclear war, China will effectively revert to the Warring States Period of 2500 years ago. Is that really your intention? What would the US look like if it were returned to 2500 years ago, before the rise of the Anasazi and the Mound Builders, before the Olmec invented writing? A much more likely outcome than this sort of quasi time travel is that either a post-nuclear US or a post-nuclear China would look like nothing ever seen before in human history, more closely resembling the world in the immediate aftermath of the Chicxulub impact.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
China was ruled by rival warlords far more recently than 2,500 years ago, most recently from about 1916 to 1928 (officially, though some warlords continued to hold sway in isolated regions well into the 1940s). Strong central government collapses -> country fractures into regions controlled by warlords -> new strong central government arises. China has seen that movie many, many times in its history.
- kragen 5y ago
  It's not clear to me that this is an insightful framing of the situation. Certainly it is true that in China, as anywhere else, the degree of political autonomy accorded to regions of different sizes varies; at times governance is more centralized, and at other times it is less so. Borders shift over time, as do the particular powers accorded to local leaders. Similarly, when the strong central government in Mycenaean Greece collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece fractured into "regions controlled by warlords." Then one of those warlords, Alexandros, conquered Persia, most of the Mediterranean, Turkey, much what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and part of India. Then he died, and his empire fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Roman Republic conquered most of the same region (not coincidentally becoming a Greek-speaking empire in the process), plus part of Britain and most of Western Europe, and fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Holy Roman Empire arose and reunified a lot of those regions, at least in name (arguably, much like the later Zhou) and then fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then Napoleon arose and reunified a lot of those regions, including parts of Russia that Rome and the Holy Roman Empire had never reached, but that didn't last long, and the warlords retook control from Napoleon pretty quickly. Even the Bourbons got restored! Then Hitler arose and reunified a lot of those regions, but his "country" fractured into regions controlled by warlords even more quickly. Then the European Union arose and reunified a lot of those same regions again by winning the loyalty of local warlords like Charles de Gaulle, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Joseph Luns. Or, alternatively, NATO did. Or the UN. And you can tell a similar story about Russia. You could reasonably object that NATO, the EU, the UN, and the Holy Roman Empire aren't or weren't "strong central governments" as we know them today. Well, they weren't Westphalian states, it's true. But neither were any of the reigns of Chinese emperors we're talking about here. And, although if you go to overseas Chinese school you might be taught a simple linear succession of dynasties, the truth in China is much more complicated, just as the truth about western Europe is much more complicated than my linear version above. What does that have to do with what Russia would do if the nukes started flying? Does the collapse of the Kievan Rus' in the face of the Golden Horde mean that Russia's command structure would collapse in the 20 minutes needed to launch a counterattack? The Scythian king Ateas, from what is now Russia, fought in his dotage and fell in battle with Philip of Macedon in 00339 BCE, and his empire collapsed. Should we thus infer that his successor Vladimir Putin will remain in power too long and make Russia weak, easy pickings for a new conqueror? Such inferences are obviously ridiculous.
musingsole 5y ago
You cripple your argument with your own. The US can't return to a 2500 year old structure; it's not old enough to have that history. Which is a strength. China has further to fall than the US. That old history is still history. The US would cobble together into something more reminiscent of something later into history by virtue of a shorter memory span...whether or not that is beneficial in this hypothetical future is a different question.
- kragen 5y ago
  The People's Republic of China isn't 2500 years old either. Your metaphors about strength, falling, shoe repair, structures, and crippling have no predictive power, being only metaphors. It's true that people in the US don't know what happened there 2500 years ago, but people in China don't know much of what happened there 2500 years ago either (partly the fault of Qin Shi Huang), and in either place, there's no particular reason to expect it to happen again, other than metaphorical fuzzy thinking about falling and cobbling, and the general tendency of human societies to do things that human societies can do instead of things they can't. Even if post-apocalyptic China were seized with a historical-reenactment fervor and Sima Qian were the new bestselling author, the material conditions of production today are quite different from those that prevailed in the Bronze Age. People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. At least some surveillance satellites will surely remain in orbit. Semiarticulated trucks with tank escorts could still carry materiel to battlefronts orders of magnitude faster than porters with wheelbarrows or even the Grand Canal. The whole scenario is just nonsense.
  - giardini 5y ago
    kragen says "People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. " shortwave radios? With no electrical power, no batteries? "smelt iron" with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes? Hedge your bets and buy a couple of horses tomorrow. [Bad news: I can imagine your neighbors' queries: "Hey, Bing, what's with the sudden interest in horses, eh? You aren't worried about some crazy sort of apocalypse, are ya? Whaddaya gonna do - ride off into the sunset or sumthin'?" Good news: you can eat a horse!] "Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local CCP leaders. But it would be easier and more satisfying to kill them by hand. "surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why? Where are the encryption codes? Most CCP command structures would be smoked. "Semi-articulated trucks with tank escorts" is a laugh - with no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads. "to battlefields"? What battlefields? Oh, of course, so they can fight the Chinese living in the next valley. But before they do that, how about getting something to eat? Maybe you could roll up to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken in your 'semi-articulated truck'!8-)) "The whole scenario is just nonsense." - finally you got one right! What you envision _is_ nonsense. The point of my post was that for a post-apocalyptic China, geography is destiny. The country would be fragmented socially and politically out of necessity. The most likely political structure to result is one that supports a more primitive infrastructure. China would fall into a number of separate independent regions. The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them.

kragen 5y ago

Responding to this pathetic trolling was a mistake: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174525 and I would have known better if I'd looked at giardini's posting and commenting history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27174521

giardini 5y ago
Bad News: Engaging kragen in plain conversation was my error. Had I known he would prove a jackass (e.g., here he using "cancel culture" methods to smear my statements on this thread by suggesting readers pause to read all my past posts on HN!) I would have never posted on this thread. But as his own internet posting history shows, he seems quick to anger and, while quite well-schooled in some respects, he is unable to recognize that there's something seriously inherently flawed in his thought processes. And before that flaw, whatever it is, can fully reveal itself, he goes off screaming "troll!". I'm not in bad company, apparently kragen also said some very bad things about Eric Naggum, although kragen raged after Naggum died (wish he'd done the same for me, but...) And the comparison is unfair in that I'm neither so talented nor so demanding as Naggum was. And I love a good laugh. Good News: this is the first such person I've met on HN so I think such is a rarity.