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This is pretty fascinating when living in an ex-USSR country. There’s a target between two major cities in the forest at a non-descript village. I know what’s t
by jgilias 3y ago
This is pretty fascinating when living in an ex-USSR country. There’s a target between two major cities in the forest at a non-descript village. I know what’s there though. In the Soviet times there used to be a large facility hosting hundreds of tanks.
At the same time, I know of a place that used to be a rocket launch base. There were around 10 across my country alone. I don’t see any of those being targeted.
- cornholio 3y agoIt seems the non-USSR eastern Europe would have been completely reduced to nuclear ash, unlike most of the USSR, which is much less covered due to its size and sparse population. In my city alone there were three targets.
- jgilias 3y agoBut that’s not really surprising. There’s a lot of targets in the Baltics. But the reason is that the Soviets put a lot of military objects there because it’s just closer to the potential frontline, as well as targets further west. I’m just happy we got out of that nightmare. If for some reason we were still part of Russia, chances are I’d be sent off to kill Ukrainians right as we speak. Given that people from ethnic minorities are 200x more likely to be drafted than Russians from Moscow or St Petersburg.
- ativzzz 3y ago> If for some reason we were still part of Russia, chances are I’d be sent off to kill Ukrainians right as we speak To be fair, if you were still part of the USSR then so would Ukraine, and you wouldn't be fighting a war due to MAD with the US (maybe a proxy war in Myanmar or something), you'd most likely die of alcoholism or heart disease
- scotty79 3y agoI'd be dead. Along with quarter of million people in my city. Just because there's a very small civilian airport with one runway that serves about 12 planes per day, on the outskirts. Screw the coldwar US.
- jgilias 3y agoTime for more stories then. I have a family friend who’s old enough to have served in the Soviet military. The guy is a sharp dude who had really good grades in math. So when he was drafted he was directly enlisted into the ‘rocket force’ as a guy who does the trajectory calculations. He served in Kaliningrad. He tells that they’d get drills where they are woken up at night, and then need to calculate trajectories for hitting Oslo, Paris, London, etc.
- scotty79 3y agoI'd expect nothing less from Russian side. But my country has and always had a lot of sympathy for the US. Always awaiting their eventual win as our saviors. So it feels just wrong. It's like learning that their main plan to end the standoff was to shoot the hostages in the first volley.
- jemmyw 3y agoIn an all out nuclear exchange nobody was going to win
- polotics 3y agoThe plan was the results of unavoidable logic: you have to strike where the capabilities had been placed, and it was the logic of the Moscow empire to place capabilities away from places it favoured.
- scotty79 3y agoCapability targetted in my case is small single runway. Probably hundreds killometers from the closest stationed bomber. I won't argue that it's completely worthless, but wasn't Soviet Union mostly relying on ballistic missile launchers not strategic bombers? Than again if you have enough missiles to glass Earth many times over, you gotta point them somewhere. Why not on every runway you can find on satellite images?
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
- onthecanposting 3y agoWell, how many US ICBMs actually work is an open question and the recent test results aren't good. You might not have much to worry about.
- rblatz 3y agoCan you provide details? I’ve not heard any concern about the readiness of US weapons, but have heard a lot since the Ukraine war about the poor state of Russian military equipment.
- michaelt 3y agoI don't know about the weapons, but there have certainly been reports of a lot of personnel readiness issues [1] I suspect in the cold war, missile crews could feel it was an important job, high-tech and well-funded, even if it tedious, unsociable and morally questionable. It no longer has those upsides. [1] https://apnews.com/united-states-government-b942adacae524dcfa7fbc85ed6292433 https://apnews.com/united-states-government-b942adacae524dcf...
- rainworld 3y agoRecent Minuteman ICBM test failure: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/02/minuteman-iii-missile-destroyed-after-failed-test-launch-near-california-coast.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/02/minuteman-iii... I’ve not heard any concern Because you’re not supposed to. have heard a lot since the Ukraine war Because you’re supposed to.
- tomatotomato37 3y agoI remember a scandal around a decade ago where it turned out a singular wrench specific to minutemen warheads had to keep getting shipped between multiple different bases due to general degradation and mismanagement of US nuclear forces. It was enough of an embarrassment that it ultimately resulted in something like a $300 billion dollar refurbishment program for the whole triad over the next three decades. So for the answer to that question, a lot of them didn't work... and now they do.
- toast0 3y agoWas your launch base established in 1956? The US went through several launch systems during the cold war and some launch sites were reused but some sites were new.
- jgilias 3y agoI don’t really know. The context is that as a kid I went to a kind of a military training after school activity. That sounds super weird, I know, but it was fun, got to learn the basic military training. Anyway, we had a summer camp for a week or so near one of these decommissioned rocket facilities, and we were just told to not go anywhere near the silos, as they’re pretty deep. So, I know where it is, but I don’t know when it was commissioned.
- bunabhucan 3y agoAll the slio locations are public information and have wikipedia pages. If you know the location you are interested in you can probably find it with some sleuthing or googling "decomissioned nuclear silo [state]". e.g. here are the north dakota ones https://www.nps.gov/articles/mappingmissilefield.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/mappingmissilefield.htm
- wolverine876 3y ago> as a kid I went to a kind of a military training after school activity. That sounds super weird, I know, but it was fun, got to learn the basic military training. It sounds like the way I've always heard dictorships indoctrinate kids and start training them, but was that your experience?
- mardifoufs 3y agoThat's probably the case for the US too. The numerous missile silos all over middle America, in the middle of farmlands probably made for very attractive targets.
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah they went to great lengths to hide them but did this really work? I always doubt it. I never really saw the point in hiding or targeting them though. But the time a Russian launch would be detected the launch would be triggered and the silos would have already been empty by the time the warhead arrived.
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoWe didn't hide ours (American). We put up chain link with barbed wire, razor tape, and nice signs that started, "Use of deadly force authorized."
- wkat4242 3y agoOh ok I thought they were hidden. But that mainly comes from the memory of WarGames, where the staff enters into the missile silo through a fake house :P But I think keeping such massive project secret in a society like the US is much more difficult anyway than in a tightly controlled autocracy like the soviet union.
- tnecniv 3y agoMy guess is that it’s an open secret kind of thing. There’s not a big sign that says “nukes here!” but when you see stuff like the previous poster mentioned, you can guess what’s going on.
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoIt was easy to get confused in a lot of dirt roads out in Nebraska, but just ask any local rancher, "Hey, where's Sierra Seven?" They'd tell you. All the locals knew all about it, the original quarter acre plots were bought from local ranchers. And, of course, every several years, a big missile on a lowboy would come down the road, with a convoy.
- yencabulator 3y agoI believe USSR had a preference for mobile launch mechanisms (like trains) over silos, so maybe the US had to prioritize other targets for the relatively inaccurate ICBMs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-23_Molodets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-23_Molodets