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They might be an easier target than you think. What could a dozen 1MT warheads, sunk to a depth of 100ft, do to submarines anywhere in the Great Lakes? Shockwa

They might be an easier target than you think. What could a dozen 1MT warheads, sunk to a depth of 100ft, do to submarines anywhere in the Great Lakes? Shockwaves travel through water much better than through air. Water explodes into steam in a way that air doesn't. My intuition is that you actually could pretty reliably paste a sub inside the Great Lakes using some nukes launches from Russia. The lakes may just not be deep or big enough to hide in. This is leaving aside the treaty, the lack of freshwater sub technology, the long time to retaliation due to long range, the lack of a sub facility on the lakes, and the unnecessary nature of the whole enterprise (if the US lost 1 boomer sub to an enemy they could bring the others into a defensive posture making them practically impossible to hunt down, to preserve 2nd strike capability).

Retric 4y ago
Nuclear depth bombs are well known technology that was abandoned because they don’t actually work that well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_depth_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_depth_bomb They aren’t that much better than depth charges in part because energy is spread in 3D space. 1,000,000 times the energy means ~100x the range, but depth charges are very short range weapons. In WWII with a sub on radar and using 12 depth charges in a grid they only had a 5-10% kill chance. Which is one reason why nuclear depth charges where replaced by target seeking torpedoes. Carpet bombing the Great Lakes with thousands of nukes could work but that’s a great nuclear sponge. Directing a huge quantity of munitions away from other targets. PS: 100ft is likely shallow with much of the blast being sent into the air but that’s not very important to your suggestion.