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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 ne

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 they target the civilian airport (where there's also a small ANG presence) or use multiple warheads for the metro area, I'll probably be vaporized. Obviously I know no one posting here can answer definitively, since I'm asking about some of the toppest of top secret stuff.

kingsloi 5y ago
I thought about this too! Surely Gary, IN wouldn't be targeted, but with biggest steel mills in the US, maybe it would?
excalibur 5y ago
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.
- javajosh 5y ago
  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 only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. [1] It would not be hard to list out the most valuable US locations to destroy, government, business, and military, for either the goal of preventing C&C and/or for ending the civilization. [0]https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there-in-the-world https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
  - OkayPhysicist 5y ago
    I actually just recently read a report from the late 80s that discussed a couple of scenarios and likely distribution of nuclear targets in each one. The best case scenario (in the context of a full scale nuclear war with Russia) was a couple hundred successfully detonated strikes. The eastern seaboard, and all the metropolitan areas on the west coast were smoking holes in the ground. Pretty much anywhere with a sufficiently large military base, or significant government presence was on the "likely destroyed" list. There were a lot of random inland areas, which I assumed were targeting silos. Basically, even in the 400 bomb scenario, the Boise field office of the IRS becomes the nation's highest authority.
  - yellowapple 5y ago
    > However, there are only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. Probably more than that across NATO, though. Not to mention that the US is in alliances other than NATO.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > 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 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.
lkbm 5y ago
I recently learned about the "nuclear sponge" strategy. The US has a bunch of ICMBs stationed in remote areas in hopes of drawing nuclear strikes to those areas, away from population centers[0]. [0] https://kottke.org/20/10/americas-nuclear-sponge https://kottke.org/20/10/americas-nuclear-sponge
- c03 5y ago
  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.
  - lbotos 5y ago
    Sure, but isn't the problem "second strike": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike With nukes, you gotta stop your nuclear armed opponent from killing you second, first.
    - sdoering 5y ago
      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.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - hutrdvnj 5y ago
        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.
  - yellowapple 5y ago
awb 5y ago
> 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 the city then one might suffice. If you want fallout then you want an air burst to the West and let the Easterly winds spread the fallout. Each missile has it’s own distance and accuracy calculations. The author has another site called Missle Map that explores these scenarios in much more detail: https://nukemap.org/missilemap/faq/ https://nukemap.org/missilemap/faq/
- whammywon 5y ago
  > If you want fallout then you want an air burst to the West and let the Easterly winds spread the fallout. 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. :-)
  - yellowapple 5y ago
    Nukemap seems to agree that a surface detonation would irradiate a much wider area than an airburst.
holtkam2 5y ago
Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout
- outworlder 5y ago
  How many of those are MIRVs?
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    technically none because the count of 6000 nukes is the number of warheads not delivery vehicles.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  This is assuming Russia is only targeting US. Note that in an all-out nuclear warfare scenario, Europe will be inevitably involved too. I doubt Russia would want to spend all their arsenal on a single combatant, that'd essentially ensure other nuclear states such as France/UK to attack them
- m0zzie 5y ago
  > Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Having 6000 nukes ≠ 6000 nukes with operational readiness. If nuclear war were to break out, it is extremely unlikely that they could successfully use more than 1000 of those. Not that that should make anyone feel any better about the situation, because even 1 nuke is too many.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Well Russia has about 6000 nukes But closer to 1500 operationally deployed, and if they should launch any significant number of them, a substantial portion of the rest of the operationally deployed nukes in the world will be landing in Russia targeted and destroying any capacity they have to use any they have that weren't ready and deployed in the first strike. Which is why if they use any significant number, even as a first strike, it will largely be for a counterforce strike doing the same thing to other nuclear powers, because who wants to be in a bunker without usable nukes when the guys you just nuked are in their bunker with usable nukes.
kmonsen 5y ago
It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast. If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout on steroids, but with less mutants and also less food. Personally I don't think the human race will go extinct, but the ones that do survive are not going to live in comfy modern societies anymore. And if you are living somewhat close to a nuclear strike you are going to miss that hospital when radiation sickness sets in.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Each to their own but I have never understood this way of thinking. I have kids, I would want them to survive and to have a chance at life even if its not the shiny modern one. I would also want them to have kids and so on. Life would obviously be hard but it would still be life. Death comes soon enough for everyone anyway. Obviously the best outcome is no nukes at all.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - minot 5y ago
    I think the difference is I don’t have kids. I would like to think I want kids but there is no way I can afford having kids especially given I’m not sure if I can even afford to retire. I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.
    - jupp0r 5y ago
      You could choose to live somewhere where you don't have to be a millionaire to have children. Lots of people move out of San Francisco around the time they are starting a family, for example. Incidentally, these areas might also be less likely to be hit by nuclear bombs.
jarrenae 5y ago
I'm actually in the middle of working on a resource for that exact thing: https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks/risk-of-nuclear-disaster https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks/risk-of-nuclear-disast... we're collecting better sources, but eventually you should be able to visualize a heatmap if you will of locations at higher risk. We're working to add variables like wind travel direction, known military bases, etc. - super speculative, but I think it's better than what currently exists.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
Spooky23 5y ago
I was into this topic awhile back, basically while nobody talks about the details, there are reports re the reactions of people when they learn of the details. And they are basically horrified, borderline traumatized, but cannot come up with another plan. The number of missiles and warheads available are very high, and planners identify all sorts of targets and assign priority, etc. I would imagine that factored into that are significant operational failures, operators who refuse to act, etc. I’d assume any military significant site, current or former industrial target, interesting infrastructure, etc would be targeted multiple times. In an area like NYC, Boston, DC, SFO, forget it. If you didn’t get vaporized, you’d probably wish you did.
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  This is correct. Based on public statements, the record appears to be the Russian Don-2N battle management radar facility: in the 1998 revision of the SIOP, it had 69 consecutive warheads dedicated to its destruction [0]. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111203417/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://web.archive.org/web/20201111203417/https://journals....
- coldcode 5y ago
  Unless you are far far away (like NZ or Aus) you are better off dying instantly. Even far away, and even if there is no nuclear winter sort of result, the radiation and effects are likely get you as well. Volcanic dust can be pretty widespread (Krakatoa is likely bigger than all the nukes we have) but it's far more localized unlike a general nuclear exchange, plus the dust is likely to be both radioactive and contain all sorts of nasty volatilized chemicals.
elorant 5y ago
Most probably they'll hit military bases, and airports.
AdamH12113 5y ago
It probably depends on how the war escalated to a nuclear exchange and whether it's a first strike or a second strike. In a first strike, the goal would be to take out the enemy nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible ("counterforce") to prevent retaliation, so in that case we would hope that all or almost all of the warheads would be targeted at remote missile bases. But you need a large number of accurate missiles to do that, so if you don't have those you're stuck targeting cities ("countervalue") for deterrence. It doesn't seem like the U.S, Russia, or China have a hardline commitment to any particular response. If there are tit-for-tat attempts at limited escalation and deescalation, they need to be flexible. Regardless, you need multiple warheads per target for reliability reasons, so if there's a massive nuclear war, you can probably expect a quick death rather than a slow one.
- belter 5y ago
  You forgot about the Nuclear Submarines. They will ensure any first strike nation will not be be around after destroying their adversary.
nostrademons 5y ago
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 multiple nukes targeted on it, because they want to be really sure that they destroy that missile if it hasn't left yet. Many of these warheads are SLBMs, where flight times are only a couple minutes, so that they can hit as soon as it looks like a launch is imminent. 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.
- agency 5y ago
  "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.
  - hollerith 5y ago
    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.
ZoomerCretin 5y ago
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1124730.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1124730.pdf 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.
- OkayPhysicist 5y ago
  I am... dubious of the actual danger EMP poses to submarines. If they were surfaced, especially if they were attempting to recieve radio communications, sure. But a submerged submarine would be extremely well shielded. The real question would be whether a submarine captain would be willing to press the button based on radio silence alone.
  - ZoomerCretin 5y ago
    From the report linked, on the threat to communications between submarines and command, and the direct threat to submarines: >> HEMP Threat To U.S. Submarines? > HEMP attack could achieve for Russia a key objective the USSR could not achieve during the Cold War—neutralizing U.S. ballistic missile submarines at sea. > Russian Super-EMP weapons could destroy or degrade U.S. bombers, ICBMs, SSBNs in port and their strategic C3I—including land-based VLF communications systems, TACAMO aircraft, and other redundant means of strategic command and control used to convey Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) to submarines hiding at sea. Severing their communications links to the National Command Authority would neutralize U.S. submarines, rendering them useless. > HEMP could also be used to attack submarines on patrol at sea directly. > A high-yield warhead (1 megaton or more) detonated for HEMP over the ocean would cover an area 2,200 kilometers in radius, a zone nearly as large as North America, with powerful E3 HEMP that would penetrate the ocean depths and possibly damage or destroy the electronics of submarines on patrol. Submarines would be especially vulnerable when deploying their very long antennae—which they need to do precisely when trying to receive EAMS.
jupp0r 5y ago
From my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong): Bunker targets (mostly ICBM silos, heavily shielded targets like the bunkers under the White House, etc) would be targeted with a surface burst because bunkers would withstand air bursts. Soft targets like airports, major cities, factories, ports, etc would be targeted using air bursts to maximize the destruction by preventing the shock wave and direct radiation from being shielded by geography and buildings.
pthread_t 5y ago
There's a well known paradox in nuclear strategy where counter-force targeting is actually more "humane", but it requires the nation to keep more nukes in service. On the other hand, a small stockpile will deter your enemy only if you are willing to use your stockpile on your enemy's population centers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kingsloi 5y ago

I thought about this too! Surely Gary, IN wouldn't be targeted, but with biggest steel mills in the US, maybe it would?

excalibur 5y ago

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.

javajosh 5y ago
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 only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. [1] It would not be hard to list out the most valuable US locations to destroy, government, business, and military, for either the goal of preventing C&C and/or for ending the civilization. [0]https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there-in-the-world https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- OkayPhysicist 5y ago
  I actually just recently read a report from the late 80s that discussed a couple of scenarios and likely distribution of nuclear targets in each one. The best case scenario (in the context of a full scale nuclear war with Russia) was a couple hundred successfully detonated strikes. The eastern seaboard, and all the metropolitan areas on the west coast were smoking holes in the ground. Pretty much anywhere with a sufficiently large military base, or significant government presence was on the "likely destroyed" list. There were a lot of random inland areas, which I assumed were targeting silos. Basically, even in the 400 bomb scenario, the Boise field office of the IRS becomes the nation's highest authority.
- yellowapple 5y ago
  > However, there are only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. Probably more than that across NATO, though. Not to mention that the US is in alliances other than NATO.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > 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 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.

lkbm 5y ago

I recently learned about the "nuclear sponge" strategy. The US has a bunch of ICMBs stationed in remote areas in hopes of drawing nuclear strikes to those areas, away from population centers[0]. [0] https://kottke.org/20/10/americas-nuclear-sponge https://kottke.org/20/10/americas-nuclear-sponge

c03 5y ago
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.
- lbotos 5y ago
  Sure, but isn't the problem "second strike": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike With nukes, you gotta stop your nuclear armed opponent from killing you second, first.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    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.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - hutrdvnj 5y ago
      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.
- yellowapple 5y ago

awb 5y ago

> 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 the city then one might suffice. If you want fallout then you want an air burst to the West and let the Easterly winds spread the fallout. Each missile has it’s own distance and accuracy calculations. The author has another site called Missle Map that explores these scenarios in much more detail: https://nukemap.org/missilemap/faq/ https://nukemap.org/missilemap/faq/

whammywon 5y ago
> If you want fallout then you want an air burst to the West and let the Easterly winds spread the fallout. 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. :-)
- yellowapple 5y ago
  Nukemap seems to agree that a surface detonation would irradiate a much wider area than an airburst.

holtkam2 5y ago

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

outworlder 5y ago
How many of those are MIRVs?
- thereddaikon 5y ago
  technically none because the count of 6000 nukes is the number of warheads not delivery vehicles.
gnulinux 5y ago
This is assuming Russia is only targeting US. Note that in an all-out nuclear warfare scenario, Europe will be inevitably involved too. I doubt Russia would want to spend all their arsenal on a single combatant, that'd essentially ensure other nuclear states such as France/UK to attack them
m0zzie 5y ago
> Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Having 6000 nukes ≠ 6000 nukes with operational readiness. If nuclear war were to break out, it is extremely unlikely that they could successfully use more than 1000 of those. Not that that should make anyone feel any better about the situation, because even 1 nuke is too many.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Well Russia has about 6000 nukes But closer to 1500 operationally deployed, and if they should launch any significant number of them, a substantial portion of the rest of the operationally deployed nukes in the world will be landing in Russia targeted and destroying any capacity they have to use any they have that weren't ready and deployed in the first strike. Which is why if they use any significant number, even as a first strike, it will largely be for a counterforce strike doing the same thing to other nuclear powers, because who wants to be in a bunker without usable nukes when the guys you just nuked are in their bunker with usable nukes.

kmonsen 5y ago

It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast. If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout on steroids, but with less mutants and also less food. Personally I don't think the human race will go extinct, but the ones that do survive are not going to live in comfy modern societies anymore. And if you are living somewhat close to a nuclear strike you are going to miss that hospital when radiation sickness sets in.

wonderwonder 5y ago
Each to their own but I have never understood this way of thinking. I have kids, I would want them to survive and to have a chance at life even if its not the shiny modern one. I would also want them to have kids and so on. Life would obviously be hard but it would still be life. Death comes soon enough for everyone anyway. Obviously the best outcome is no nukes at all.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- minot 5y ago
  I think the difference is I don’t have kids. I would like to think I want kids but there is no way I can afford having kids especially given I’m not sure if I can even afford to retire. I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    You could choose to live somewhere where you don't have to be a millionaire to have children. Lots of people move out of San Francisco around the time they are starting a family, for example. Incidentally, these areas might also be less likely to be hit by nuclear bombs.

jarrenae 5y ago

I'm actually in the middle of working on a resource for that exact thing: https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks/risk-of-nuclear-disaster https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks/risk-of-nuclear-disast... we're collecting better sources, but eventually you should be able to visualize a heatmap if you will of locations at higher risk. We're working to add variables like wind travel direction, known military bases, etc. - super speculative, but I think it's better than what currently exists.

GoodJokes 5y ago

Spooky23 5y ago

I was into this topic awhile back, basically while nobody talks about the details, there are reports re the reactions of people when they learn of the details. And they are basically horrified, borderline traumatized, but cannot come up with another plan. The number of missiles and warheads available are very high, and planners identify all sorts of targets and assign priority, etc. I would imagine that factored into that are significant operational failures, operators who refuse to act, etc. I’d assume any military significant site, current or former industrial target, interesting infrastructure, etc would be targeted multiple times. In an area like NYC, Boston, DC, SFO, forget it. If you didn’t get vaporized, you’d probably wish you did.

aerostable_slug 5y ago
This is correct. Based on public statements, the record appears to be the Russian Don-2N battle management radar facility: in the 1998 revision of the SIOP, it had 69 consecutive warheads dedicated to its destruction [0]. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111203417/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://web.archive.org/web/20201111203417/https://journals....
coldcode 5y ago
Unless you are far far away (like NZ or Aus) you are better off dying instantly. Even far away, and even if there is no nuclear winter sort of result, the radiation and effects are likely get you as well. Volcanic dust can be pretty widespread (Krakatoa is likely bigger than all the nukes we have) but it's far more localized unlike a general nuclear exchange, plus the dust is likely to be both radioactive and contain all sorts of nasty volatilized chemicals.

elorant 5y ago

Most probably they'll hit military bases, and airports.

AdamH12113 5y ago

It probably depends on how the war escalated to a nuclear exchange and whether it's a first strike or a second strike. In a first strike, the goal would be to take out the enemy nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible ("counterforce") to prevent retaliation, so in that case we would hope that all or almost all of the warheads would be targeted at remote missile bases. But you need a large number of accurate missiles to do that, so if you don't have those you're stuck targeting cities ("countervalue") for deterrence. It doesn't seem like the U.S, Russia, or China have a hardline commitment to any particular response. If there are tit-for-tat attempts at limited escalation and deescalation, they need to be flexible. Regardless, you need multiple warheads per target for reliability reasons, so if there's a massive nuclear war, you can probably expect a quick death rather than a slow one.

belter 5y ago
You forgot about the Nuclear Submarines. They will ensure any first strike nation will not be be around after destroying their adversary.

nostrademons 5y ago

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 multiple nukes targeted on it, because they want to be really sure that they destroy that missile if it hasn't left yet. Many of these warheads are SLBMs, where flight times are only a couple minutes, so that they can hit as soon as it looks like a launch is imminent. 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.

agency 5y ago
"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.
- hollerith 5y ago
  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.

ZoomerCretin 5y ago

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1124730.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1124730.pdf 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.

OkayPhysicist 5y ago
I am... dubious of the actual danger EMP poses to submarines. If they were surfaced, especially if they were attempting to recieve radio communications, sure. But a submerged submarine would be extremely well shielded. The real question would be whether a submarine captain would be willing to press the button based on radio silence alone.
- ZoomerCretin 5y ago
  From the report linked, on the threat to communications between submarines and command, and the direct threat to submarines: >> HEMP Threat To U.S. Submarines? > HEMP attack could achieve for Russia a key objective the USSR could not achieve during the Cold War—neutralizing U.S. ballistic missile submarines at sea. > Russian Super-EMP weapons could destroy or degrade U.S. bombers, ICBMs, SSBNs in port and their strategic C3I—including land-based VLF communications systems, TACAMO aircraft, and other redundant means of strategic command and control used to convey Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) to submarines hiding at sea. Severing their communications links to the National Command Authority would neutralize U.S. submarines, rendering them useless. > HEMP could also be used to attack submarines on patrol at sea directly. > A high-yield warhead (1 megaton or more) detonated for HEMP over the ocean would cover an area 2,200 kilometers in radius, a zone nearly as large as North America, with powerful E3 HEMP that would penetrate the ocean depths and possibly damage or destroy the electronics of submarines on patrol. Submarines would be especially vulnerable when deploying their very long antennae—which they need to do precisely when trying to receive EAMS.

jupp0r 5y ago

From my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong): Bunker targets (mostly ICBM silos, heavily shielded targets like the bunkers under the White House, etc) would be targeted with a surface burst because bunkers would withstand air bursts. Soft targets like airports, major cities, factories, ports, etc would be targeted using air bursts to maximize the destruction by preventing the shock wave and direct radiation from being shielded by geography and buildings.

pthread_t 5y ago

There's a well known paradox in nuclear strategy where counter-force targeting is actually more "humane", but it requires the nation to keep more nukes in service. On the other hand, a small stockpile will deter your enemy only if you are willing to use your stockpile on your enemy's population centers.

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