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I hope you would, and unless you happen to live near a major political center or a military installation, I think your chances would be very good. A nuclear war
by flexie 4y ago
I hope you would, and unless you happen to live near a major political center or a military installation, I think your chances would be very good. A nuclear war would be terrible, but it's not a doomsday scenario.
In the last months, we've seen how the Red army performs in conventional war. They were supposed to have 10,000 - 14,000 tanks, including modern ones, but we now see that they barely had any modern tanks and that after losing 2,500 tanks from the 60s, 70s and 80s, they started begging Belarus for their old tanks. They also claimed to have a modern air force, but until now, they have been unable to establish air dominance against a country that barely had any air force. And they were supposed to have a navy, but also that was an exaggeration. They claimed to have precision-guided missiles, and even supersonic missiles. They ran out of those long time ago, and they weren't that precise or fast. What they had was a lot of empty posture.
Why do we believe that they are any better at nuclear war than they are at waging conventional war? Whatever is true for a simple conventional war, is even more true for a nuclear war: Their missiles and warheads are old and unmaintained, and far fewer in numbers than they pretend.
The effects of corruption runs so deep in their society. Just like you can't buy any complex Russian products in your local stores, and just like you never wanted a Russian car, Russian military is completely incapable of successfully waging war against the West.
Can Russia launch a nuclear attack against NATO? Probably, yes. But it would be much smaller than the official numbers suggest, and layered Western missile shields would intercept a percentage of those missiles. Some missiles would miss their target and some would not detonate.
Different studies give different estimates ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions dead in the immediate aftermath of a strike, but studies assume that Russia is actually capable of carrying out a strike and penetrate our defenses with a large number weapons that work. Estimates of dead afterwards, are usually from starvation, not from radiation.
It's been 40-50 years since Russia actually had strength comparable to NATO. Even back then, humanity would have survived a nuclear war. Nowadays, both Russia and the free world has fewer weapons, and we now know that Russian military capabilities are routinely exaggerated. A nuclear war with Russia would be terrible, but it would be over quickly, it would end in Russian defeat, and most of us would live on afterwards.
- Luc 4y agoI agree with you, but it seems to be a minority opinion among the general population here in Western Europe. I meet a lot of people who think their life will be short and nasty if Russia drops a nuclear weapon over Ukraine (which, at a distance of 2000km, would affect us not at all).
- tsimionescu 4y agoYou do realize that dropping that nuke essentially means WWIII, which will absolutely affect you quite a bit?
- PeterisP 4y agoAs far as I have read, all the major NATO countries have expressed a position that they would respond immediately and violently to a nuclear attack by Russia in Ukraine (to act as a deterrent for such an unprecented attack), however they have all indicated that the response would likely be significant but non-nuclear, e.g. one response option that was mentioned was sinking of the whole Black Sea fleet with conventional missiles.
- tsimionescu 4y agoThat would mean the start of a NATO-Russia war, that will almost certainly attract responses from China and other nations - the start of World War III. I didn't say that we would immediately nuke Russia, but if you think NATO directly attacking Russian troops would not change your way of life wherever you live in Europe, you're far more optimistic than I am.
- PeterisP 4y agoI believe that deterrence works - it doesn't work perfectly, and is not a guarantee, but I strongly believe that a credible deterrent works far better than any plausible alternative we might have.