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I think you overestimate the power of a nuclear weapon, or even dozens of them. It would take hundreds of targeted strikes to disable a nuclear-armed adversary.

I think you overestimate the power of a nuclear weapon, or even dozens of them. It would take hundreds of targeted strikes to disable a nuclear-armed adversary. Having fewer nuclear weapons only means your major cities, military bases, and industrial assets will be leveled while the majority of your adversary's capabilities remain intact.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
Pretending that counterforce is "disarming" is cute, but the public understanding of nuclear weapons as being countervalue is the more realistic view of what counterforce will actually do. And countervalue does indeed just need a few dozen weapons as city sizes are approximately powerlaws, so there just isn't that many large ones to hit.
- spacemark 3y ago
  >there just isn't that many large ones to hit. Maybe not here in the US - we only have 10 cities with more than 1 million people. But China has 145 cities >1m. We would not be a threat to their industrial base with only a dozen nukes. Yes, a dozen nukes would cause many billions, perhaps even trillions in damage and horrific loss of life, but China would still have 125 other cities to keep their war machine moving. Deterrence through countervalue threats is great, but once that trigger has been pulled you still have the rest of the war to fight. No need to be condescending, by the way.
  - enterprise_cog 3y ago
    Once that trigger is pulled you have already lost the war. And just because China still has more large cities does not mean that they could effectively wage war.
Retric 3y ago
Nukes are less directly damaging than people think, but the knock on effects are much worse. If your goal is simply to destroy a country as a functioning power you don’t need to kill every single person. Nuke a handful of major ports and you massively harm the US economy without killing that many people. Add major cities and things get really bad at even a dozen nukes. Sure, we would nuke the fuck out of anyone that launched such an attack but that doesn’t allow us to ignore such attacks.
- spacemark 3y ago
  Sure, I didn't intend to downplay the seriousness of nuclear war. It would be horrific and damaging to an extent never seen before. My point was just that the logic of having only a few nukes while everyone else has many more doesn't work. China has 145 cities that have more than 1 million people. You wouldn't be a serious threat to their industrial base with only a few nukes, and so the effect of your deterrence would be minimal.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Those aren’t all independent cities. Suzhou is next to Shanghai and you devastate them both with a single nuke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou My guess is an 10MT H-bomb could kill ~20 million people by aiming at Suzhou despite the city only having 6.7 million people. Honestly to cripple China with minimal nukes 2-3 Starfish Prime style Nuclear electromagnetic pulses could disable most of their east coast before you target individual cities. Also, responding in kind to a limited nuclear exchange may be appropriate if you think an adversary still has a large stockpile. There is a lot of uncertainty involved.
    - scrumper 3y ago
      I'm not sure any country is fielding 10 megaton monsters anymore. Maybe Russia has a few. The biggest weapon in the USA's inventory is "only" 1.2 megatons and that has to be dropped by an airplane so it's not going to have much chance of landing on Shanghai. Most weapons now are an order of magnitude smaller (hundreds of kilotons), with a high degree of accuracy ("circular error probable") obviating the need for extreme yield. Nukemap, known to lots of people here, can help you explore your predictions. Here, I airburst a B-83 over Shanghai so you don't have to: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1200&lat=31.2322758&lng=121.4692071&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=10887&casualties=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&zm=8 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1200&lat=31.2322758&... Sleep tight...
      - Retric 3y ago
        Nukemap is rather optimistic, you aren’t getting the kind of medical attention to give people who got a 500rem dose a 50/50 shot of survival after a nuclear bombing. It also ignores fallout, secondary fires, etc. Hard to say what hypothetical countries arsenals actually look like. The B-41 was supposedly 5.2 megatons of TNT per tonne of bomb designed in the late 1950’s. At 5 tons each a non reusable falcon 9 could get ~4 different 25 Mt bombs to LEO and possibly more on a ballistic trajectory. So it’s not like monsters don’t fit on rockets, saturation bombing is just more effective.

SiempreViernes 3y ago

Pretending that counterforce is "disarming" is cute, but the public understanding of nuclear weapons as being countervalue is the more realistic view of what counterforce will actually do. And countervalue does indeed just need a few dozen weapons as city sizes are approximately powerlaws, so there just isn't that many large ones to hit.

spacemark 3y ago
>there just isn't that many large ones to hit. Maybe not here in the US - we only have 10 cities with more than 1 million people. But China has 145 cities >1m. We would not be a threat to their industrial base with only a dozen nukes. Yes, a dozen nukes would cause many billions, perhaps even trillions in damage and horrific loss of life, but China would still have 125 other cities to keep their war machine moving. Deterrence through countervalue threats is great, but once that trigger has been pulled you still have the rest of the war to fight. No need to be condescending, by the way.
- enterprise_cog 3y ago
  Once that trigger is pulled you have already lost the war. And just because China still has more large cities does not mean that they could effectively wage war.

Retric 3y ago

Nukes are less directly damaging than people think, but the knock on effects are much worse. If your goal is simply to destroy a country as a functioning power you don’t need to kill every single person. Nuke a handful of major ports and you massively harm the US economy without killing that many people. Add major cities and things get really bad at even a dozen nukes. Sure, we would nuke the fuck out of anyone that launched such an attack but that doesn’t allow us to ignore such attacks.

spacemark 3y ago
Sure, I didn't intend to downplay the seriousness of nuclear war. It would be horrific and damaging to an extent never seen before. My point was just that the logic of having only a few nukes while everyone else has many more doesn't work. China has 145 cities that have more than 1 million people. You wouldn't be a serious threat to their industrial base with only a few nukes, and so the effect of your deterrence would be minimal.
- Retric 3y ago
  Those aren’t all independent cities. Suzhou is next to Shanghai and you devastate them both with a single nuke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou My guess is an 10MT H-bomb could kill ~20 million people by aiming at Suzhou despite the city only having 6.7 million people. Honestly to cripple China with minimal nukes 2-3 Starfish Prime style Nuclear electromagnetic pulses could disable most of their east coast before you target individual cities. Also, responding in kind to a limited nuclear exchange may be appropriate if you think an adversary still has a large stockpile. There is a lot of uncertainty involved.
  - scrumper 3y ago
    I'm not sure any country is fielding 10 megaton monsters anymore. Maybe Russia has a few. The biggest weapon in the USA's inventory is "only" 1.2 megatons and that has to be dropped by an airplane so it's not going to have much chance of landing on Shanghai. Most weapons now are an order of magnitude smaller (hundreds of kilotons), with a high degree of accuracy ("circular error probable") obviating the need for extreme yield. Nukemap, known to lots of people here, can help you explore your predictions. Here, I airburst a B-83 over Shanghai so you don't have to: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1200&lat=31.2322758&lng=121.4692071&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=10887&casualties=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&zm=8 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1200&lat=31.2322758&... Sleep tight...
    - Retric 3y ago
      Nukemap is rather optimistic, you aren’t getting the kind of medical attention to give people who got a 500rem dose a 50/50 shot of survival after a nuclear bombing. It also ignores fallout, secondary fires, etc. Hard to say what hypothetical countries arsenals actually look like. The B-41 was supposedly 5.2 megatons of TNT per tonne of bomb designed in the late 1950’s. At 5 tons each a non reusable falcon 9 could get ~4 different 25 Mt bombs to LEO and possibly more on a ballistic trajectory. So it’s not like monsters don’t fit on rockets, saturation bombing is just more effective.