4 ms·

Theres also a lot of ambiguity regarding the effect of non-dirt fallout... I live near a military port, and submarine base with US fleet ties. It's probably no

Theres also a lot of ambiguity regarding the effect of non-dirt fallout... I live near a military port, and submarine base with US fleet ties. It's probably not a "priority target" but it's a pretty likely target if your goal is to deny the USA support in this region, so in its probably going to make the list should a significant number of nukes are launched/deployed, theres also a military airfield, but its no where near as valuable a target for a nuke since the USA couldn't turn any convenient highway and parking lot or field into an airfield with a couple of C5s. The only sensible place to drop a nuke near me is that port, anything else is replaceable by the forces who would value the port. As part of evaluating my situation, using my own process ( which I outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 ) I ran into the airburst vs laydown attack question with respect to the port infrastructure. If you want to damage a military port, including any of the hardened, buried and underwater infrastructure... you probably need to put your nuke on the ground. But its a small island so I thought to myself ... just how much radioactive dirt could they possibly produce, surely they would end up vaporising way more water, how does this affect the fallout?... well it turns out that the fallout is different and estimating as a member of the public not party to various classified military reports that were obviously written about this and every nuke related topic under the sun... is actually pretty hard. Theres scattered notes from past research by people like https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-explosions-how-deep.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-exp... but its not as clear a picture as it is for a "normal" land based ground detonated nuke.

lumost 4y ago
> and submarine base with US fleet ties. As part of the nuclear triad this is likely the highest priority target. Likewise ports useful for shipping military equipment are high priorities. For similar reasons, downtown manhattan is somewhat safer than Brooklyn due to distance from important ports which can be used to ship soldiers.
- techdragon 4y ago
  Okinawa, Atsugi, Sasebo, Yokosuka, Sydney, Perth, Exmouth, Pine Gap, Diego Garcia, Souda Bay, Naples, and many more … The USA has a surprisingly large number of military facilities, many of which appear to have been located at or collocated near naval facilities, around the world that would in the event of a nuclear war, be prime targets. In a way this has strategic advantages as it makes it harder to “get everything” but at the end of the day it’s a tangled geopolitical history that lead to the current status quo.
  - lumost 4y ago
    This is also one reason why it would be virtually impossible to contain a nuclear exchange. Any submarine base, or location where the US stores or can operate nukes becomes a target. This set includes most of the G7.
    - techdragon 4y ago
      One of the interesting titbits of all this is that even if the nearby port is considered not worth the nuke for whatever strategic planning reasons, it’s almost a certainty that, outside of a weird “you nuked once, so we’re going to nuke just once too” scenario, Australia (where I live) has at least one if not two or three nukes coming it’s way in all but the most limited nuclear war scenarios involving nuclear powers. (for instance India and Pakistan exchanging nukes could potentially remain a very regionally limited conflict despite the catastrophic death toll) Depending on the exact planning and strategic goals it’s hard to imagine a significant nuclear war that doesn’t involve trying to eliminate at least one if not all of these three targets. - Nuke 1 -> Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap - It’s got the CIA, it’s got the NSA and it’s got the NRO, its got 38 radomes housing antennas drawing down secret classified satellite data from the whole hemisphere of satellites and is part of the entire ECHELON/ 5 Eyes program - Nuke 2 -> Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt - 1 Megawatt VLF Transmitter, most powerful in the Southern Hemisphere, designed for communicating with underwater submarines from the USA, Australia and likely capable of also doing so to any cooperating NATO nations … in short its for sending the kind of signal to an underwater submarine that would be used to tell a ballistic missile submarine to follow the orders in the green yellow blue or red folders. One of the highest likely targets for a nuke on the planet (along with its sibling VLF stations around the world) if you ask me… - Nuke 3 -> RAAF Base Edinburgh, heart and home to the coordination centre of the Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar Network, a network of linked ionospheric frequency radar transmitter and receivers as well as ionosondes to monitor the state of the ionosphere which when combined give it a claimed capability to monitor air and sea movements over 37000square kilometres, as far as “3000 kilometres away” according to the official documents, and with a sensitivity that is apparently good enough the prototype was able to pick up a rocket launch in china 5500km away during testing in 1997 (so the real thing can probably do a bit better than the claimed 3000km range)

lumost 4y ago

> and submarine base with US fleet ties. As part of the nuclear triad this is likely the highest priority target. Likewise ports useful for shipping military equipment are high priorities. For similar reasons, downtown manhattan is somewhat safer than Brooklyn due to distance from important ports which can be used to ship soldiers.

techdragon 4y ago
Okinawa, Atsugi, Sasebo, Yokosuka, Sydney, Perth, Exmouth, Pine Gap, Diego Garcia, Souda Bay, Naples, and many more … The USA has a surprisingly large number of military facilities, many of which appear to have been located at or collocated near naval facilities, around the world that would in the event of a nuclear war, be prime targets. In a way this has strategic advantages as it makes it harder to “get everything” but at the end of the day it’s a tangled geopolitical history that lead to the current status quo.
- lumost 4y ago
  This is also one reason why it would be virtually impossible to contain a nuclear exchange. Any submarine base, or location where the US stores or can operate nukes becomes a target. This set includes most of the G7.
  - techdragon 4y ago
    One of the interesting titbits of all this is that even if the nearby port is considered not worth the nuke for whatever strategic planning reasons, it’s almost a certainty that, outside of a weird “you nuked once, so we’re going to nuke just once too” scenario, Australia (where I live) has at least one if not two or three nukes coming it’s way in all but the most limited nuclear war scenarios involving nuclear powers. (for instance India and Pakistan exchanging nukes could potentially remain a very regionally limited conflict despite the catastrophic death toll) Depending on the exact planning and strategic goals it’s hard to imagine a significant nuclear war that doesn’t involve trying to eliminate at least one if not all of these three targets. - Nuke 1 -> Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap - It’s got the CIA, it’s got the NSA and it’s got the NRO, its got 38 radomes housing antennas drawing down secret classified satellite data from the whole hemisphere of satellites and is part of the entire ECHELON/ 5 Eyes program - Nuke 2 -> Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt - 1 Megawatt VLF Transmitter, most powerful in the Southern Hemisphere, designed for communicating with underwater submarines from the USA, Australia and likely capable of also doing so to any cooperating NATO nations … in short its for sending the kind of signal to an underwater submarine that would be used to tell a ballistic missile submarine to follow the orders in the green yellow blue or red folders. One of the highest likely targets for a nuke on the planet (along with its sibling VLF stations around the world) if you ask me… - Nuke 3 -> RAAF Base Edinburgh, heart and home to the coordination centre of the Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar Network, a network of linked ionospheric frequency radar transmitter and receivers as well as ionosondes to monitor the state of the ionosphere which when combined give it a claimed capability to monitor air and sea movements over 37000square kilometres, as far as “3000 kilometres away” according to the official documents, and with a sensitivity that is apparently good enough the prototype was able to pick up a rocket launch in china 5500km away during testing in 1997 (so the real thing can probably do a bit better than the claimed 3000km range)