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It sort of sounds like you believe that Washington (or any other country with enough nukes) could use nukes to kill every single Russian and that Moscow could u

It sort of sounds like you believe that Washington (or any other country with enough nukes) could use nukes to kill every single Russian and that Moscow could use nukes to kill every single American. This belief gets repeated a lot on the internet: a full "exchange" of nukes is game over. In reality, even if Moscow were cheating on its treaty obligations and had (in ready-to-use form) every nuke that the Soviet Union possessed at the peak of its arsenal, plus all the intercontinental missiles and bombers the Soviets had at the peak of their arsenal, Moscow could kill only about half of the US population. Since the Russian population is more concentrated in cities than the US population, Washington could kill about 55% of Russians with the arsenal it possessed at the height of the Cold War. There is a bit of a wild card in these estimates: if the effect called nuclear winter turns out to be as bad as some say it will be, a lot more would die (mostly outside the countries that got nuked). Nuclear winter will probably turn out to be a nothing burger, but we cannot know that for sure, so there is some chance it would cause the deaths of most of the people in the world, but if Moscow's situation becomes desperate enough and there is a clearly identified enemy who is causing the desperation, it start to become rational for Moscow to bet that the nuclear winter won't be extremely bad (which it probably won't be). Moscow might calculate that Russian are better at enduring hardships than the West is, so Russia will be able to recover from the nuclear exchange before the West does, so that in a model in which the only thing that matters is Russia's strength relative to the West, a nuclear exchange can make sense -- not now, but if the situation becomes more desperate for Moscow because of the attacks you describe.

impossiblefork 1y ago
I don't see how there's a Russian central authority upon the destruction of the great cities. It's state collapse. It's never going to get up. The cultural and intellectual elite's gone and there's nothing.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Whether the elite is gone depends on whether the elite sought shelter from a nuclear attack, like it did during the start of the invasion of Ukraine. (The Russian regime has facilities built into granite in the Southern Ural mountains that can withstand direct attack from nukes.) Also, if an attacker does manage to kill everyone in the ruling coalition during a time of existential war, a new ruling coalition forms that is just as committed to the war as the old coalition. A government of a society like Russia (or the US for that matter or Britain) doesn't collapse when it is hit very hard. Everyone rallies around the government, or more precisely, most people rally around and the rest either remain silent or get imprisoned or killed. Hitler famously believed that the Soviet Union would collapse if invaded: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down," he said. It didn't collapse, nor did China when Japan invaded and killed millions of Chinese and occupied all its coastal cities. Neither of China's two governments collapsed even though before the Japanese invasion the two governments were engaged in a civil war that was in itself the third most deadly war of the 20th Century. The most powerful military in the world could not force regime change on Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s or on Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s. This is because when invaded, most countries will become very unified around the goal of expelling the invader -- and a big nuclear attack will elicit the same "nationalistic" feelings as an invasion.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    The political leadership did do so, but I'm not talking about the political leadership, I'm talking about the class the produces MSU and SPbU professors, engineers, etc. At best they'll be going into the subway. I think losses would be >75% though.

impossiblefork 1y ago

I don't see how there's a Russian central authority upon the destruction of the great cities. It's state collapse. It's never going to get up. The cultural and intellectual elite's gone and there's nothing.

hollerith 1y ago
Whether the elite is gone depends on whether the elite sought shelter from a nuclear attack, like it did during the start of the invasion of Ukraine. (The Russian regime has facilities built into granite in the Southern Ural mountains that can withstand direct attack from nukes.) Also, if an attacker does manage to kill everyone in the ruling coalition during a time of existential war, a new ruling coalition forms that is just as committed to the war as the old coalition. A government of a society like Russia (or the US for that matter or Britain) doesn't collapse when it is hit very hard. Everyone rallies around the government, or more precisely, most people rally around and the rest either remain silent or get imprisoned or killed. Hitler famously believed that the Soviet Union would collapse if invaded: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down," he said. It didn't collapse, nor did China when Japan invaded and killed millions of Chinese and occupied all its coastal cities. Neither of China's two governments collapsed even though before the Japanese invasion the two governments were engaged in a civil war that was in itself the third most deadly war of the 20th Century. The most powerful military in the world could not force regime change on Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s or on Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s. This is because when invaded, most countries will become very unified around the goal of expelling the invader -- and a big nuclear attack will elicit the same "nationalistic" feelings as an invasion.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  The political leadership did do so, but I'm not talking about the political leadership, I'm talking about the class the produces MSU and SPbU professors, engineers, etc. At best they'll be going into the subway. I think losses would be >75% though.