Would you fight in a nuclear WWIII vs USSR?

[Tzefa]

Without the restraint of the superpowers and no "world opinion" to worry about, Arabs and Israelis would have fought a horrifically barbaric war. Who wins? If the Israelis' ammo supply can hold out...

We make more ammo than they do - remember theirs was supplied by the USSR.

 

 

Expect to see Latin America come out dominant. A Brazilian "superpower"? Again, possible armed conflicts without restraining influence of international organizations, and scrambling over the bones of the old world.

 

I would rather bet on Asia. China and Japan might not get involved and come out as winners. Latin America has too many internal problems it seems.

[Guest aevans]

1. The Great Deadly Radiation Cloud is strictly hyperbole. The Northern hemisphere would be an unhealthy place for quite a while, with cancer killing off a lot of people quicker than it usually does, and infanticide for obvious mutations would be de rigeur, but after the first couple of years all of that would be routine.

 

2. Plenty of tactical units would survive, possibly even a few major supply depots. The problem would be strategic logistics and transportation. One imagines quite a few anabases going on as cut off units and maybe even large formations attempt to self-repatriate. I think most units overseas would see little point in continuing the war, even if some semblance of command remained to give orders from home. The only thing that would hold them together would be the necessity of mutual support to affect a return to CONUS.

 

3. Second rate Southern Hemisphere powers might have an upper hand for a while in world affairs, but if you cut the US population in half, you still have over 100 million people, and we already know that blast damage (which is mostly what nukes produce) to factories doesn't destroy much capital equipment, it just blows roofs off and knocks the odd wall down. Superpowers can come back from nuclear wars within a couple of decades.

[Tzefa]

1. The Great Deadly Radiation Cloud is strictly hyperbole. The Northern hemisphere would be an unhealthy place for quite a while, with cancer killing off a lot of people quicker than it usually does, and infanticide for obvious mutations would be de rigeur, but after the first couple of years all of that would be routine.

Probably. People still live in the vicinity of Chernobyl and no mutants come out of the zone to eat their brains.

Thou its a crappier and generally much shorter life than the norm.

 

2. Plenty of tactical units would survive, possibly even a few major supply depots. The problem would be strategic logistics and transportation. One imagines quite a few anabases going on as cut off units and maybe even large formations attempt to self-repatriate. I think most units overseas would see little point in continuing the war, even if some semblance of command remained to give orders from home. The only thing that would hold them together would be the necessity of mutual support to affect a return to CONUS.

Thats what I was thinking as well. Don't think its would be very likely for them to come back thou - how'd they get the transports?

So if they stay, they probably quit the fight and try to find a cleaner area and establish themselves there. Fighting for less polluted spots probably ensues.

 

3. Second rate Southern Hemisphere powers might have an upper hand for a while in world affairs, but if you cut the US population in half, you still have over 100 million people, and we already know that blast damage (which is mostly what nukes produce) to factories doesn't destroy much capital equipment, it just blows roofs off and knocks the odd wall down. Superpowers can come back from nuclear wars within a couple of decades.

Not so sure about that one. I'd say its not so much the capital equipment, but the complete breakdown of social order that would follow, would have a long and lasting effect on all western nations involved. That and radiation exposure, the effects of which would probably also last for generations.

You might still have 100 million people, but they could be broken down into many separate warlord-controlled 'states' and a big percentage of them would be sick and weak... and their children would be sick and weak.

[Tzefa]

I doubt any of asia would be in a state of being able to do much between the fallout and the likely (even if only short term and partial) agricultural collapse.

 

Asia has been known to recover relatively quickly from various natural and man-made disasters. Plus, China (unless Japan decides to contest it?) would have the enormous asset of Siberia - sure, with a whole bunch of radioactive spots where soviet military installations were, but it’s so huge and sparsely populated that even a large number of missiles wouldn't have destroyed all of its resources.

 

There is a reason australia is chosen the bastion of hope/civilization/survival in so much of the fiction - its the most likely to not receive catastrophic fallout.

God's way of saying "sorry for all the poisonous snakes and spiders"

[Guest aevans]

Thats what I was thinking as well. Don't think its would be very likely for them to come back thou - how'd they get the transports?

 

Take them. And the fuel. That's the reason to stay together -- a battalion or two have a chance at commandeering what they need all the way back across the ocean. Roving bands of ten or twenty don't.

 

Not so sure about that one. I'd say its not so much the capital equipment, but the complete breakdown of social order that would follow, would have a long and lasting effect on all western nations involved. That and radiation exposure, the effects of which would probably also last for generations.

You might still have 100 million people, but they could be broken down into many separate warlord-controlled 'states' and a big percentage of them would be sick and weak... and their children would be sick and weak.

 

Why? Social order is a lot easier to maintain than one might think, especially when there's money in it. And there's money in reestablishing trade. Even a stable balkanized US is still only goint to be broken up into five or six states, each of which controls the economic potential of the average late 19th Century European power. And population will grow rapidly under conditions ov a relatively empty land. People are just way more resilient than most give them credit for. I'd be more worried about livestock populations crashing due to a lack of husbandry.

[Guest aevans]

Relatively empty land that still have a shedload of fallout on them. US Civil defence manuals advised removing the top few inches of soil before anything was fit to grow. Then you have to ensure you have adequate full to run the tractors, spread the food to the populace. Assuming the Soviets targeted the US oil refineries, you would be pretty swiftly left with the fuel you already had in your tanks, and what you could get off credit from Saudi. Assuming the unloading and distributing facilities still existed.

 

A pesimistic view that doesn't reflect the strategic realities. Oil refineries, though key to recovery and force generation, were way down the list of target priorities -- there are over a hundred of them and they're hard to take out without a direct hit.

Edited May 27, 2008 by aevans

[Mote]

A pesimistic view that doesn't reflect the strategic realities. Oil refineries, though key to recovery and force generation, were way down the list of target priorities -- there are over a hundred of them and they're hard to take out without a direct hit.

 

There was approximately three hundred major refineries in the 1980s and according to the OTA they were actually relatively vulnerable, 5psi being considered enough to destroy them (which means that any ICBM ever built by US/USSR is accurate and destructive enough to take out a refinery). The destruction of eighty (a rather insignificant portion of the Soviet arsenal being required) would eliminate two-thirds of US oil refining capability.

[Guest aevans]

There was approximately three hundred major refineries in the 1980s and according to the OTA they were actually relatively vulnerable, 5psi being considered enough to destroy them (which means that any ICBM ever built by US/USSR is accurate and destructive enough to take out a refinery). The destruction of eighty (a rather insignificant portion of the Soviet arsenal being required) would eliminate two-thirds of US oil refining capability.

 

Read the section in On Thermonuclear War about weapon system reliability and criteria for reasonably ensured destruction of a target. If you wanted to get a significant portion of those eighty refineries, you'd have to target them with several hundred weapons. That's not a "rather insignificant" portion of anybody's arsenal, since we're only counting weapons mounted on strategic delivery systems.

[Mote]

Read the section in On Thermonuclear War about weapon system reliability and criteria for reasonably ensured destruction of a target. If you wanted to get a significant portion of those eighty refineries, you'd have to target them with several hundred weapons. That's not a "rather insignificant" portion of anybody's arsenal, since we're only counting weapons mounted on strategic delivery systems.

 

Even if you target three warheads per refinery, that's only 240 warheads out of a force of nearly ten thousand (counting only ICBMs and SLBMs). If you assume 80% missile and 80% warhead reliability, then two warheads per target should be enough, correct?

 

I'll try and check that out tomorrow when the library is open.

[Guest aevans]

Even if you target three warheads per refinery, that's only 240 warheads out of a force of nearly ten thousand (counting only ICBMs and SLBMs). If you assume 80% missile and 80% warhead reliability, then two warheads per target should be enough, correct?

 

I'll try and check that out tomorrow when the library is open.

 

You're being a bit optimistic there. Kahn, who arguably forgot more about the subject than you and I combined will ever know, was figuring on 50% end to end reliability of ICBM delivered nukes under combat conditions. I don't see any reason to believe any differently, regardless of weapon or delivery system under discussion. Given that, three per target would get you 87.5% reliability on target destruction. Now, 240 shots out of 10,000 may not sound significant to you, but that's 2.4% of the total force. If you identify 40 special industrial target sets of similar size (and I bet you could, given some thought) then you've just 2.4 percented your force to death -- without even addressing all of the counterforce targets that your most accurate ICBMs exist to attack. Oh, yes, 240 warheads assigned to a single industrial infrastructure target set is a significant (and unlikely) segment of the force.

[Guest aevans]

A massive release of long half life isotopes is a very bad thing . We're not talking extinction class event here but certainly a screeching halt over generations. Incidents like Chernobyl aren't exactly indicative of the consequences for a number of reasons.

 

Its only hyperbole until you start dealing with potentially large numbers of "salted" warheads.

 

What salted warheads. Those things were only a theoretical exercise, as far as anybody knows.

 

According to what predictions? Sounds like some pretty strict hyperbole right there. This is hardly a piddly little Pakistan-India all out exchange.

 

Brother Hermann figured a couple of decades. I'll take his word for it.

[Guest aevans]

I'm not sure Kahn is really the be all to end all of nuclear strategists - granted he was privy to all of the technical stuff we can only dream of but I've often wondered if he actually used hard data or just threw in some speculative stuff as often happens with that lofty high level modelling.

 

he has always come off to me as being a portly (read morbidly obese) little games theorist who was sociopathic enough to get off on the idea of humanity inexorably rolling forward on the gears of capitalism and technology heedless of anything - really a viewpoint just as silly as the doomsday leftists he ardently fought against.

 

You really ought to read his work, not just depend on the opinions of people who didn't like what he had to say.

[Guest aevans]

Its not likely that the US/USSR are running around with huge stockpiles of cobalt tampered warheads but there are other candidate materials which are plenty nasty.

 

What were the estimates for planet killing? .5 Kton of cobalt 60?

 

Nobody had time to mess with that, It was hard enough to make reliable bombs that went boom when the fuzing system said to. Playing around with planet killing also presumes that one accepts implicitly that fighting a nuclear war is the equivalent of committing national suicide, otherwise, why do something that's as dangerous to you as the enemy? The Soviets certainly weren't planning on not survivng, and though we didn't give a whole lot of thought to survival and recovery, we weren't planning on everyone dying either. Really, let's put the sci fi and no nukes propaganda hysteria behind us and face realities.

 

I have a bit, hes definitely got a nack for grand strategy, I just don't agree with his games theory centric stuff all of the time. Really he is just diametrically opposite to the doomsday crowd which to me makes him equally unsatisfying. He is probably right that life would go on, humanity probably would survive, etc though.

Thing is, everybody's a theorist where nuclear war is concerned. You see Kahn as some kind of paladin for nuclear warfighting with a clean consciense, simply because he didn't throw up his hands in despair like his detractors. A more balanced view is that he was more interested in the practicalities of what happens when the shooting starts, because somebody had to be.

 

The thing is, what is the critical damage required to topple a social order? Societies have collapsed from far less than getting each of their major urban centers nuked or near nuked.

 

Actually, given the amount of city and infrastructure destruction we imposed on our enemies in WW II, albeit over a period of time, it appears that it takes quite a lot of destruction to undermine social order, provided that the target population has a central idea of a nation whose survival everyone is working towards. Maybe social order breaks down and nothing can be done, but failing to plan for or at least think about recovery simply because it might be hard is a silly response to the problem.

Edited May 28, 2008 by aevans

[Yama]

Thing is, everybody's a theorist where nuclear war is concerned. You see Kahn as some kind of paladin for nuclear warfighting with a clean consciense, simply because he didn't throw up his hands in despair like his detractors. A more balanced view is that he was more interested in the practicalities of what happens when the shooting starts, because somebody had to be.

Actually, given the amount of city and infrastructure destruction we imposed on our enemies in WW II, albeit over a period of time, it appears that it takes quite a lot of destruction to undermine social order, provided that the target population has a central idea of a nation whose survival everyone is working towards.

 

Central question would be food. People can survive if their homes are blown to smithereens, but if there is not enough food for everyone, breakdown of order is imminent. That's what Japan was concerned about in closing months of WW2. That's also something Nazis put great deal of effort in, based on experiences of 1918-19.

[ShotMagnet]

...given the amount of city and infrastructure destruction we imposed on our enemies in WW II, albeit over a period of time, it appears that it takes quite a lot of destruction to undermine social order...

But that begs the question of 'how much destruction over what temporal interval?' If I firebomb a city, I nevertheless allow the survivors to at least attempt to rebuild; that does wonders for the psyche. If I 'nuke the site from orbit', as it were, I present an entirely different echelon of psychological challenge.

 

It appears to take quite a lot to undermine social order, but that may well be because the societies in question both have something to do (like manage rubble) and time to do it in. Past a certain magnitude, delivered more or less instantaneously, the task and the psyche should find both overmatched.

 

Shot

[Guest aevans]

It appears to take quite a lot to undermine social order, but that may well be because the societies in question both have something to do (like manage rubble) and time to do it in. Past a certain magnitude, delivered more or less instantaneously, the task and the psyche should find both overmatched.

 

Shot

 

People are tough, resilient, whatever adjective you want to use. The survivors that are of sound mind and body are going to seek out and find useful things to do that improve their lives.

[Mote]

You're being a bit optimistic there. Kahn, who arguably forgot more about the subject than you and I combined will ever know, was figuring on 50% end to end reliability of ICBM delivered nukes under combat conditions. I don't see any reason to believe any differently, regardless of weapon or delivery system under discussion.

 

Skimming through it, I haven't seen that yet, but it seems to me like that estimate is based on the early ICBMs such as Atlas which were the ones around at the time.

 

Now, 240 shots out of 10,000 may not sound significant to you, but that's 2.4% of the total force. If you identify 40 special industrial target sets of similar size (and I bet you could, given some thought) then you've just 2.4 percented your force to death -- without even addressing all of the counterforce targets that your most accurate ICBMs exist to attack. Oh, yes, 240 warheads assigned to a single industrial infrastructure target set is a significant (and unlikely) segment of the force.

 

After you've hit oil, major ports, steel, aluminum, any vulnerable critical areas for the electrical grid (too many powerplants to bother going after individually), and major road/rail chokepoints, what's left to really bother hitting? Of course, the fairly integrated economies of the US, Canada, and Mexico make that a bit more interesting. Still, I suspect that you could hit all those for a thousand warheads or less. Coin toss imho on whether the resulting food and resource shortages cause a century plus collapse.

 

Presumption with this was that it was a second-strike countervalue attack or even a limited first-strike. I don't see counterforce as all that possible once SSBNs began their deployments.

[Guest aevans]

Skimming through it, I haven't seen that yet, but it seems to me like that estimate is based on the early ICBMs such as Atlas which were the ones around at the time.

 

And Titan. I wouldn't assume, however, that later models would be any more reliable.

 

After you've hit oil, major ports, steel, aluminum, any vulnerable critical areas for the electrical grid (too many powerplants to bother going after individually), and major road/rail chokepoints, what's left to really bother hitting? Of course, the fairly integrated economies of the US, Canada, and Mexico make that a bit more interesting. Still, I suspect that you could hit all those for a thousand warheads or less. Coin toss imho on whether the resulting food and resource shortages cause a century plus collapse.

The assumption here of course is that people will somehow forget to organize and repair, because, well, that would ruin the doomsday scenario if people, uh, acted like people, with, you know, a purpose.

 

Presumption with this was that it was a second-strike countervalue attack or even a limited first-strike. I don't see counterforce as all that possible once SSBNs began their deployments.

 

Here's where Kahn is real smart and most people are, well, not so much. Because of inherrent inaccuracies in such systems, SSBNs are countervalue hedges against first strikes. If the SSBN deterrent fails, then the disarming counterforce first strike, combined with a hot line message along the lines of don't you dare use your SSBNs against us, unless you want your cities and economy destroyed to, suddenly becomes an entre to a demand for immediate capitulation that the average POTUS would give in to. Why destroy a country's economy when you can hold it hostage?

[Guest aevans]

Hurricane Katrina only destroyed 3 oil terminals and it had an extremely adverse affect on the US oil exports.

 

It put a crimp in a market for a time, nothing more. Let's not be equating an inconvenience with a real catastrophe.

 

I somehow doubt the USSR would throw enough warheads at the US to make the rubble bounce, then neglect the opportunity to ensure the US wouldnt recover.

 

Aside from the elsewhere mentioned utility of holding an intact economy hostage, the above is representative of apocalyptic style thinking that doesn't seriously address the subject. If all one can think about is rubble bouncing, how is one taking the subject seriously?

[Mote]

And Titan. I wouldn't assume, however, that later models would be any more reliable.

What I've seen indicates higher reliability, 80-90%, compared to earlier ones or Soviet ICBMs. Trident II has gone 122 straight successful test launches.

 

The assumption here of course is that people will somehow forget to organize and repair, because, well, that would ruin the doomsday scenario if people, uh, acted like people, with, you know, a purpose.

 

The assumption is that the destruction of the US transportation network reduces American civilization to local areas around farms. Even if you could repair the road and rail networks in time, I don't think that there would be the fuel available to permit the movement of enough food to prevent mass starvation. Take California for instance. One quarter of the US food supply, something like only half a dozen rail connections to other states or Mexico. Rather insignificant diversion of resources to cut those, and the San Joaquin Valley could probably be isolated even easier. Depending on fallout patterns, it might also be advisable to drop large surface burst or earth penetrating weapons precisely for the purpose of dusting large farmland areas with fallout.

 

Here's where Kahn is real smart and most people are, well, not so much. Because of inherrent inaccuracies in such systems, SSBNs are countervalue hedges against first strikes.

Agreed until you get to Trident II, that's counterforce capable (90m CEP if memory serves).

 

If the SSBN deterrent fails, then the disarming counterforce first strike, combined with a hot line message along the lines of don't you dare use your SSBNs against us, unless you want your cities and economy destroyed to, suddenly becomes an entre to a demand for immediate capitulation that the average POTUS would give in to. Why destroy a country's economy when you can hold it hostage?

 

Except that you can do that without a preliminary counterforce strike anyhow. There's the possibility that the US could try preempting with a massive counterforce attack, but that just triggers your own SSBNs and I'd imagine that anyone making such a threat would have launch-on-warning in place. Regardless of whether the counter-force strike goes through or not, any secure deterrent force holds them hostage.

 

What's the difference between calling POTUS on the red-line and threatening release of the Strategic Rocket Forces, perhaps accompanied by a demonstration nuclear strike (an SLCM striking the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port for example) in order to force a detente and coming to terms as opposed to launching a counterforce strike on SAC while the US SSBNs are unaffected? In either case, the US still has the potential to devastate the Soviets, the latter just kills millions of people and increases the risk of a mutual strategic exchange for no benefit over the former option.

[Jim Martin]

We make more ammo than they do - remember theirs was supplied by the USSR.

 

And in the '73 war the US had to deplete its war stocks in Europe so you could defeat the threat. You're telling me in the next 16 years you fixed the problem?

[Guest bojan]

And in the '73 war the US had to deplete its war stocks in Europe so you could defeat the threat. You're telling me in the next 16 years you fixed the problem?

 

Resupply was going on on the Arab side also. In 1973. war Yugoslavia sold* to Egypt:

120 T-54A/54B tanks

20 000 pieces of 100mm ammo

50 000 pieces of 122mm ammo

30 000 pieces of 152mm ammo

50 000 pieces of 57mm AA ammo

~5 millions pieces of small arms ammo

There was more, but those are data that I have confirmed.

*Amount of Soviet direct help sent was nothing short of staggering, especially AA. Considering that Egypt payed premium price for our material I guess that even Soviet help was not enough.

[Josh]

The thing is messing with the source term of warheads makes them significantly more deadly against the population of the population centres and by extension more effective at taking out what is an otherwise fairly tough target - cities being relatively tough targets all things considered.

Its not a question of designing a system meant to directly wipe out all life - the concern is the cumulative effect of many said "enhanced" warheads on post war life.

 

I'm aware of no 'enhanced' warheads of Co put into actual service (admittedly, not like USSR would admit it). Actually on the US side all SIOP type planning/thinking that has been made public seems to completely negate all effects of radiation as unpredictable and too slow, so only thermal/blast effects were taken into account for targeting. Even 'enhanced radiation' (neutron) weapons never made it into production. Again, planners not wanting to rely on unpredictable kill mechanisms and instead going for blatant PSI kills of hard targets. While this would probably mean that citizens local to a hard target could expect higher doses of radiation (more weapons for blast effect, disregarding radiation effect on local area) this also meant that no one had much more than academic concerns about weapons deliberately designed to 'salt the earth'. I'm aware of no weapon designed as such fielded in the public record. Usually the third fission stage of a strategic nuclear weapon instead of Co tended to be U-238 from what public information I've read, the fission-fusion steps yielding a wealth of neutrons able to split that rather more stable (but much more available) isotope.

 

Also I think its noteworthy that modern weapons are vastly more efficient than their original single stage cousins and thus air bursts yield far less radioactive material for a given yield. I believe that 'Fat Man' was on the order of 1% efficient; 1% of the Pu nuclei split. Modern single stage weapons I've seen a figure of ~20% floated by (tritium boosting amongst other factors), and obviously fission-fussion weapons are much more efficient than larger fission only weapons of the same yield (assuming they even can achieve the same yield). It would be interesting to see if an air bursted W-88 of 475kt released significantly more fall out than a Mk1 20 kt weapon. It wouldn't surprise me if the W-88 actually yielded far less radio active fall out (at altitude) just because of the relative efficiency of fission-fussion-fission weapons compared to a single stage, non boosted weapon.

[Guest aevans]

Honestly - we can all breath deeper if the whole salting this was in fact purely theoretical/academic.

 

It was. The whole idea was an intellectual toy for people that were biased towards discreditting nuclear warfighting theory. It was argumentum ad absurdum, in the form of, "Well, if you could wreck a city, why not make it uninhabitable too, and the rest of the whole world with it?" It's a design for suicide in a business where suicide was never contemplated. IOW, it was nothing but a subtle form of mudslinging.

[Guest aevans]

I dont think its taking the subject seriously to assume that the USSR could fire several thousand warheads at the US and not consider somewhere along the way that they really ought to consider assigning enough to ensure the US wouldnt recover easily. I suspect if you look at the US SIOP against the USSR their petrochemical plans were on the list. You really think the Soviets would do the US a favour and not include them?

 

They would probably be included in larger industrial infrastructure target sets, since they tend to be in or near large cities. I don't think they would be individually targeted to any great degree, unless they represented the major industry of an area. And I think they would stand up to blast a lot better than most people give them credit for. I'd be more concerned about casualties among those who knew how to repair and run such assets than I would be about their utter, unrecoverable destruction.

 

I would cite the opposite point of view from your opinion of mine, and point out the frankly lazy thinking of those in the DOD in the late 70s and early 80s, which seemed rather more about underplaying the Soviet nuclear threat to the US, and citing laughable evidence such as the Soviet civil defence programme to prove it was relatively simple to live through an all out nuclear exchange. One memorable quote by the head of the department for Intermediate range nuclear forces was 'if everyone has a shovel, and digs a big enough slit trench, everyone is going to make it.' Im sure it went down a storm in California. Those of us living less than 6 miles from a military runway were a little more cynical.

 

Such thinking was a consequence of believing one's own propaganda about the unthinkability of nuclear war. IMO, it's no different than the apocalyptic thinking of those who lived close to likely targets, just in a different direction. If one is not going to make it himself, it's comforting to think that it doesn't matter anyway.

 

As for what did or didn't go down in California, considering that I lived just over the hill from a major defense plant (General Dynamics, Pomona Division), I wasn't exactly planning on good times after the shooting started. But I wasn't given to despair regarding the overall situation either, just because my personal chances werem't all that good.