Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?

First of all, regardless of the specifics of this argument which I am not conversant enough with to offer cogent argumentation, Let's not forget that we have the capability with these things to render the planet a radio active wasteland no longer able to sustain life.

So how did we manage to survive the cold war? I think that the answer is that each side made the discovery that the bastards on the other side were sane after all.

Secondly, it could well be that instead of a life ending event, we would have a civilization ending event. That is probably the more likely event... a modern version of the late bronze age collapse. How many cities would we have to lose, how many people would need to die before life as we have known it would be gone, reducing us to, if not primitivism, at least scrambling to feed and shelter ourselves without the tools we normally depend on for doing that.

Dunno... I, for one don't care to find out. Let's all continue to be sane, shall we...

Don

-

We should remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both cities effectively destroyed by much smaller nukes than we have had since.
A single 200 kt detonation over New Yoyk, Moscow, London or whatever would effectively destroy the city in the short term.
Sure they would recover eventually if their society survived overall (my Mazda was made in Hiroshima), but the devastation would be immense.

Dilandu wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

You offer the usual, simplistic argument.

I offer arguments. That's the point.

Unless you are talking about 20 Megaton warheads, it takes far more than one warhead per city to kill the people in the city. The targeting plans for Poesidon missiles were a hexagonal pattern of over a dozen warheads for Moscow. Other Russian cities would have required many warheads each. Killing the people in the 100 largest Russian or American cities requires hitting about 500 seperate target areas.

Sigh. If you read my calculation, I assumed roughly 50% of total victims in each targeted city.

An attacker can not predict which warheads will be intercepted. They have to target multiple warheads at each individual target area. The chances of any individual target area not being hit is then (1-Interception rate)^Number of warheads targeted at each area. The excess warheads just pound the rubble.

This only works until numbers are start to get big; because here the normal distribution would start to work. Yes, some cities may escape destruction, while others would be hit in excess. But with 500 warheads coming through, the overall numbers of victims would not be significantly less.

You can combine SDI with effective, shelter based civil defense. Moderately hardened shelters can reduce the lethal area of a warhead by about 95%. This protects the most critical cadre. Instead of needing to hit 500 targets, an attacker needs to hit 10,000 targets.

Nah, it's impossible. USA tried to calculate such shelter system in 1960s, and came to conclusion that it would cost far too much just to build, not to mention to maintain such system. Also, the problem was, that peoples could not remain in shelters for long. A few days maximum - till the fallout recede - and then to where they could be moved? The cities are in ruin, there are no food, no power, no clean water. Not to mention, that to organize the efficient evacuation toward shelters for more than a fraction of population would be impossible in short time available.

Warheads that are fused for low altitude detonation to attack hardened shelters can be engaged with gun based terminal defenses. This drastically increases the effectiveness of the defenses. A 50% interception rate can easily be increased to 90% because there can be no light weight, low cost decoys, and the warheads can not manauver and still hit their targets.

This is sheer idiocy. Not only USA did not have terminal defenses at all - you decomissioned all your Nike sites long before that - the gun-based defenses trying to hit an ICBM WARHEAD would literally require thousand of guns per kilometer.

A full scale exchange between Russia and the US is not the only plausible scenario. It might be the least plausible. How about an attack by Great Britain or France on Russia? Only a few hundred warheads would be launched. Is Russia really willing to enable a second rate nuclear power to destroy it's cities and kill it's most skilled people just to maintain MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION?

For what possible reason Britain or France might attack Russia?

Your arguments, as usual, are half-backed, half-competent, and generally half-consistent.

Your arguments are half baked. You obviously havent done the math on warhead effects verses various cities. It is true that you can maximize casaulties by targeting city centers during business hours. However; urban core areas have lots of very robust structures that can survive area effects. Review Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Why do France and Great Britain have nuclear weapons if not to attack Russia? Are they trying to deter Rowanda?

Daryl wrote:We should remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both cities effectively destroyed by much smaller nukes than we have had since.
A single 200 kt detonation over New Yoyk, Moscow, London or whatever would effectively destroy the city in the short term.
Sure they would recover eventually if their society survived overall (my Mazda was made in Hiroshima), but the devastation would be immense.

A 200 kiloton warhead WOULD do massive damage but as much as you might think.
To put it in terms an Australian would be more familiar with, a 200 kt weapon detonated at nominal altitude over the Sydney Opera House. From points to the south, Botany Bay National Park would outside the damage zone. Bexley would be the zone where windows would be expected to break. North Bexley would be where you would have a 50% chance of getting 2nd degree burns. The northern edge of Tempe is where you would have a 50% chance of getting 3rd degree burns. The northern edge of Alexandria is where private residences and lightly built apartments would collapse.

n7axw wrote:First of all, regardless of the specifics of this argument which I am not conversant enough with to offer cogent argumentation, Let's not forget that we have the capability with these things to render the planet a radio active wasteland no longer able to sustain life.

So how did we manage to survive the cold war? I think that the answer is that each side made the discovery that the bastards on the other side were sane after all.

Secondly, it could well be that instead of a life ending event, we would have a civilization ending event. That is probably the more likely event... a modern version of the late bronze age collapse. How many cities would we have to lose, how many people would need to die before life as we have known it would be gone, reducing us to, if not primitivism, at least scrambling to feed and shelter ourselves without the tools we normally depend on for doing that.

Dunno... I, for one don't care to find out. Let's all continue to be sane, shall we...

Don

-

Your first paragraph demonstrates that you simply do not understand the basics of nuclear radiation and fallout. The total yield of above ground nuclear tests has been over 500 MEGATONS! This is equivalent to about one-tenth of a 1980s era, all out, US verses Soviet Union nuclear war. Humanity is still here. The health effects from the fallout radiation are real but have a statistically insignificant impact on fatalities. Even the numbers of deaths from fallout in the US and Soviet Union would be small relative to the deaths from prompt effects.


source: THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR
OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESMENT

One caveat. The long term fallout could get horrific if nuclear reactors are targeted. The fission energy from a single, 1,000 Megawatt electric reactor is equivalent to about 300eex15 Joules or the equivalent of about 75 Megatons. Many US reactors have decades worth of spent fuel rods on site. Targeting all US nuclear plants would be equivalent to many times the prolonged fallout from an all out nuclear war. Short term fallout is a different issue, but it is short term measured in minutes, hours, days and weeks, not years, decades, centuries or millenia.

Your comments about a civilization ended event are more plausible. Just a few hundred weapons targeted on carefully selected industrial infrastructure could criplle civilization. We are already facing plausible scenarios for global famine resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic. News flash for you, President Trump will have authority over which nations will starve to death next winter.

IFFFF??

What kind of mad dictator are you Fly? Of course they're targeted. As is every hydroelectric damn.

Annachie wrote:IFFFF??

What kind of mad dictator are you Fly? Of course they're targeted. As is every hydroelectric damn.

May be I don't want my own country to be exposed to the extra fallout?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

n7axw wrote:First of all, regardless of the specifics of this argument which I am not conversant enough with to offer cogent argumentation, Let's not forget that we have the capability with these things to render the planet a radio active wasteland no longer able to sustain life.

So how did we manage to survive the cold war? I think that the answer is that each side made the discovery that the bastards on the other side were sane after all.

Secondly, it could well be that instead of a life ending event, we would have a civilization ending event. That is probably the more likely event... a modern version of the late bronze age collapse. How many cities would we have to lose, how many people would need to die before life as we have known it would be gone, reducing us to, if not primitivism, at least scrambling to feed and shelter ourselves without the tools we normally depend on for doing that.

Dunno... I, for one don't care to find out. Let's all continue to be sane, shall we...

Don

-

Your first paragraph demonstrates that you simply do not understand the basics of nuclear radiation and fallout. The total yield of above ground nuclear tests has been over 500 MEGATONS! This is equivalent to about one-tenth of a 1980s era, all out, US verses Soviet Union nuclear war. Humanity is still here. The health effects from the fallout radiation are real but have a statistically insignificant impact on fatalities. Even the numbers of deaths from fallout in the US and Soviet Union would be small relative to the deaths from prompt effects.


source: THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR
OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESMENT

One caveat. The long term fallout could get horrific if nuclear reactors are targeted. The fission energy from a single, 1,000 Megawatt electric reactor is equivalent to about 300eex15 Joules or the equivalent of about 75 Megatons. Many US reactors have decades worth of spent fuel rods on site. Targeting all US nuclear plants would be equivalent to many times the prolonged fallout from an all out nuclear war. Short term fallout is a different issue, but it is short term measured in minutes, hours, days and weeks, not years, decades, centuries or millenia.

Your comments about a civilization ended event are more plausible. Just a few hundred weapons targeted on carefully selected industrial infrastructure could criplle civilization. We are already facing plausible scenarios for global famine resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic. News flash for you, President Trump will have authority over which nations will starve to death next winter.

First of all, I have already conceded that I am not well enough informed about the specifics to argue cogently about this subject. Reread first paragraph of previous post. I can only make general statements which seem to me to make sense, which I have done.

Secondly, there does seem to me to be one rather glaring problem with your comment on above ground nuclear testing. An explosion, however large, conducted in some remote desert is not the same thing as dropping smaller nukes on some city. The latter is much more destructive to life and infrastructure.

Thirdly after rereading my post and reviewing yours, it does not seem to me that you have contradicted my points. You do try for a more optimistic slant, but really no contradiction.

Finally, in response to your last sentence, I will only say, I hope not. But we'll see.

Don

-

https://nypost.com/2020/05/02/intellige ... ronavirus/

Don:

My response to your earlier post was undiplomatic. The apocolyptic presumptions of nuclear winter or radioactive fallout short circuit people's cognitive functions, making rational thought impossible.

We need to acknowledge that we are entering a new era of nuclear proliferation. The folks that were chanting "Bush Lied People Died" enabled North Korea to get nuclear weapons. The betrayal of Daffy Gaddafi by Obama and Clinton demonstrated to every dictatorship in the world that they can not trust the US to not destroy them if they surrender their WMD. We will inevitably have over a dozen nuclear powers within a few years and probably a score of nuclear weapons states within a decade. The US needs to fold up it's nuclear umbrella and come home. Modernization of our nuclear deterrent plus missile defenses plus robust, shelter in place, civil defense combined with neo-isolationism are America's best, grand strategy for survival.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:https://nypost.com/2020/05/02/intelligence-report-says-china-lied-about-origin-of-coronavirus/

Don:

My response to your earlier post was undiplomatic. The apocolyptic presumptions of nuclear winter or radioactive fallout short circuit people's cognitive functions, making rational thought impossible.

We need to acknowledge that we are entering a new era of nuclear proliferation. The folks that were chanting "Bush Lied People Died" enabled North Korea to get nuclear weapons. The betrayal of Daffy Gaddafi by Obama and Clinton demonstrated to every dictatorship in the world that they can not trust the US to not destroy them if they surrender their WMD. We will inevitably have over a dozen nuclear powers within a few years and probably a score of nuclear weapons states within a decade. The US needs to fold up it's nuclear umbrella and come home. Modernization of our nuclear deterrent plus missile defenses plus robust, shelter in place, civil defense combined with neo-isolationism are America's best, grand strategy for survival.

I wasn't offended by your response, merely pointing out that I certainly am not all knowing on every subject and usually try to acknowledge that.

Also, my biases tilt left. I do self identify liberal, after all. But I do try to think hard about stuff. I don't want any ideology --left or right-- turning my brain to mush.

The problem with your last sentence is that I don't believe that any form of isolationism would serve us well. I fear that it would hasten the oncoming of a major conflagration into which we would invariably be sucked whether we wanted to or not. Best to continue our present role and be smart about the conflicts we get into, limiting our involvement to protecting our allies and defending our interests. Otherwise we need a heavier role for diplomacy, relying on economic carrots and sticks. And if for some reason we are forced to apply force, do what Bill Clinton did...fight our wars from 30,000 feet.

The world is much smaller and more interconnected than its ever been. No way for us to escape that. Our role has been expensive, especially militarily. But the other side of that --and the payoff-- is that since ww2, we have become very wealthy as a country.

Don

-