Would you fight in a nuclear WWIII vs USSR?

[Marek Tucan]

One of my father's soldiers responded to a question "what will you do if you found yourself close to a nuclear explosion", after some lectures on this topic, "I would stand up and watch, I won't see it for a second time"...

 

btw dunno if our army really planned on fighting during and after nuclear exchange, they seemed not to plan for even conventional war - for example SOP called for each relay station from the long-range comms my father was serving with to have a motor rifle plt as defense... Never done during exercises. Oh, sorry, once attempted - the MR's in OT-64 Wheeled Truck Death Traps didn't make it to spot due to snow and bad knowledge of terrain.

[Josh]

You don't need cobalt to make a "salted" weapon though - there are a variety of casings that will suffice and I've really seen scarce information on the detailed construction of most warheads so who knows.

 

How much of the post USSR decommissioning has been a matter of public record? Perhaps there is some nice data to get a glimpse into what the russians were actually doing.

You have to remember that the idea behind salting is using a material that breaks down into nasty isotopes when bombarded so its a bit of an aside to the fallout question as a result of efficiency of the main reactive mass.

 

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

 

I'm aware of the mechanism of 'salting'. No I'm not aware of Soviet warhead designs either; they could have made extensive use of such a method. But in the US it seems 'satling' wasn't really a consideration though the effects were known and easy to achieve. 'Salting' necessarily lowers the yield of the final step in fission-fusion-fission chain if my understanding is correct--the final uranium jacket of the last fision step is replaced with Co or whatever the desired material is, taking away from the total yield of the weapon. Most published strategic thought on the subject seems to disregard radiation effects in favor of blast to nuetralize targets. So it seems unlikely to me that anyone would go out of the way to 'salt' a warhead when that meant you were lowering the effectiveness of the device in a counter force use--arguable the most important use, especially if first strike is your desired goal. We'll probably never know for certain if this was universally true but it seems to have been true for most if not all production US weapons, and we were discussing the global impact of a wholesale nuclear exchange. It seems unlikely that the US weapons involved were deliberately attempting to poison the target areas; perhaps North America and Europe would be far less lucky.

[Tzefa]

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?

 

1. Actually as far as I remember, most of the supplies sent in Nickel Grass came from CONUS. There was this whole issue with all european countries denying landing to US planes carrying aid except for Portugal. So they had to land there and use a lot of air refueling. Had they been flying from Germany, this wouldn’t be a problem at all – FRA to TLV is like 3 and a half hours.

 

2. In fact, we did try to fix the problem – the whole Merkava project is one successful example of that. There are lots of others, of course not all as successful. Wouldn’t say that we became totally self-reliant before ‘89, far from it, but yes a good deal of progress has been made.

 

3. What I meant by that was that the Soviets supplied a much more significant part of the arab war effort than US of the israeli. Basically, we can and did produce a lot of things ourselves – from tanks to planes to ammo, while the arab countries didn’t and still don’t. We couldn’t produce enough of everything because the USSR could always give them a lot more so we needed the US to counter that. Assuming both USA and USSR gone, we could still get by, but they couldn’t.

 

Because of that, by the way, I don't think the arabs would've gone to war after the main attraction was over.

[Nobu]

3. What I meant by that was that the Soviets supplied a much more significant part of the arab war effort than US of the israeli. Basically, we can and did produce a lot of things ourselves – from tanks to planes to ammo, while the arab countries didn’t and still don’t. We couldn’t produce enough of everything because the USSR could always give them a lot more so we needed the US to counter that. Assuming both USA and USSR gone, we could still get by, but they couldn’t.

Assuming USA/USSR indifference toward Israel would result in automatic abstentions from related UN and UNSC resolutions as such.

 

Pro-US juntas in Syria and Egypt, pro-US monarchies in Jordan and SA...does Israeli self-sufficiency pass the USA-supported Arabs vs. a USSR-backed Israel test?

[ShotMagnet]

Im sure it went down a storm in California.

Excepting a two-year span, I lived somewhere in or near the San Francisco Bay Area from 1961-1984. Various estimates from various sources suggested that between a dozen and a score of various-size nukes were allocated to my neck of the woods.

 

That's something like (at the time) about 13 million people, most of whom would have been living in apartment blocks or in conditions otherwise urbanized such that digging in and waiting it out would have been highly improbable, at least. I imagine something similar would apply to the residents in the vicinity of Puget Sound, San Diego, Groton, Long Island, etc. Or Birmingham, or Ipswich for that matter.

 

 

 

Shot

Edited June 1, 2008 by ShotMagnet

[swerve]

....

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.

 

I was a little further away (I can't see RAF Halton being a priority), but always too close for comfort to something likely to be high on a list, e.g. West Wycombe. That would get ground bursts, of course. Then I moved to a few miles downriver & downwind of Burghfield & Aldermaston, which may not have been first strike targets, but I can't imagine them not being on someones list of "make sure they can't rebuild their arsenal quickly" targets.

[jakec]

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?

 

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.

The full quote is...

"Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top...It's the dirt that does it...if there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it".

The speaker was Thomas K. Jones, Deputy Undersecretary for Defense for R&D Strategic & Theatre Nuclear Forces in the first Reagan administration.

 

Robert Scheer, a left-of-centre journalist interviewed Jones and then reported on it in the LA Times. Scheer alleged that Jones got most of his ideas from Soviet civil defence manuals. He reported that Jones had worked up ideas on protracted nuclear war while contracting with Boeing during the Carter years, and then brought them into the Reagan administration, along with a bunch of colleagues from the Committee on the Present Danger and 'Team B'. Re survival claims, as Scheer reported in the detail of the article, Jones acknowledged that those within a few miles of a designated ground zero were doomed, but his premise was that those beyond that zone could survive by putting a thick layer of dirt between themselves and the blast. Jones was of the belief that up to 90 percent of the US population could thus survive and rebuild within a matter of years. He was convinced that this was the Soviet plan.

[Guest bojan]

...but always too close for comfort to something likely to be high on a list...

 

House I grew up to Batajnica Military Airport distance:

http://elektron.tmf.bg.ac.yu/bojan/raz.JPG

 

Flat roof on the house made for the excellent observation point for fireworks during 1999.

Edited June 1, 2008 by bojan

[Archie Pellagio]

There was actually a book on this subject (which I have still somewhere, with enough shovels I believe it was called) which describes this guy at a party in france sitting with two beautiful women, who were getting increasingly bored (and presumably uneasy) with him waffling on about the survivability rates.

 

Sounds like a great guy. Im sure he would have fit in well on Tanknet.

 

Swerve, if you were downwind of Burghfield, Im assuming you were also downwind of Greenham common. Im amazed looking back on it that they put a facility like that so close to a major urban area. Not just the affect of an attack, but clearly they underrated the problem of protesters. If they had built it somewhere like Larkhill they wouldnt have had so much of a problem.

 

Would there be anywhere in england suitably far from an urban centre for the purpose?

i would've thought you'd have to go to wales or scotland (mabey cornwall) for that sort of distance?

[Tzefa]

Assuming USA/USSR indifference toward Israel would result in automatic abstentions from related UN and UNSC resolutions as such.

 

Pro-US juntas in Syria and Egypt, pro-US monarchies in Jordan and SA...does Israeli self-sufficiency pass the USA-supported Arabs vs. a USSR-backed Israel test?

 

The point here was that both US and USSR wouldn't exist, or at least be out of the game for a few decades. The UN wouldn't really function either, after a nuclear WWIII. Not that it does now, anyway.

 

But, as for your question. I've actually thought about that before, and we've discussed it on my forum a couple of times.

At the end of the day, personally I believe that Israel would've been as good or very likely actually better off (military and strategically) up until 1991, and then of course much worse after the break-up of USSR.

 

There are lots of assumptions here - to what extent would the USSR support Israel, and when would this support begin? Same thing for the arab side and the US.

 

Since the USSR actually did support Israel in our real world, in the very beginning for a short period of time, probably the most logical assumption would be that the falling out never happened.

Either because Ben Gurion would decide Israel needed some superpowerly friends from the get go, or lets say the leader would be someone else, either case - Israel decides to concede to Soviet demands, doesn't hold democratic elections, and forms a communist government (these two points were the actual stumbling block in real life).

 

How much aid USSR could give? A lot. In the real world, it only allowed Czechoslovakia to sell us some weapons, and that made a tremendous difference in the Independence War.

In our fantasy, if the USSR supports Israel fully, it could not only supply more weapons and hardware - it could completely change the whole situation in the Middle East. Why? Because more importantly than weapons, there were some 2 million jews in USSR. After WWII the Red Army had hundreds of thousands of jewish veterans, soldiers, officers, fighter pilots, tankers, sailors, even an odd general here and there. If Stalin decided to let them go to Israel, IDF's strength could have doubled or tripled in a matter of months with top-quality, battle-hardened troops.

Hell, Israel's entire population could easily double.

That would have created a whole different ball game already from the start.

 

Even if that wouldn't happen, and Soviets just supplied us the weapons - we'd still be fine. The amount of war material transferred to the arabs by WarPac is staggering. We probably wouldn't have the personnel to man half of the tanks and fighter planes and submarines they got.

 

Of course, in either scenario, come 1991 and the inevitable, things would immediately start to suck - look at Syria today. What would happen afterwards, is anyone's fantasy. Maybe Israel would've turned to NATO, like many of the former WarPac countries. Maybe the US would launched a Desert Storm against Israel

[R011]

I would sometimes say that Canada should have joined the Warsaw Pact. I thought it would be knda neat to have a full Soviet-style Tank Regiment of a hundred tanks plus supporting arms instead of a nominal British-style Regiment that could field an understrength company sized squadron of jeeps.

 

Of course, nearly all of us who were serving would be sent straight to Gulags, and there'd be that whole Communist totalitarian government thing, but still . . .

[swerve]

Would there be anywhere in england suitably far from an urban centre for the purpose?

i would've thought you'd have to go to wales or scotland (mabey cornwall) for that sort of distance?

 

There's "suitably far", & "jammed up against". Greenham is the latter.

 

The former air base is 2 km from three railway stations, two of which are served by trains from London (fastest < 1 hour). It is slightly further from the A4 (a major road). The western end is 500 metres from the edge of the town of Newbury. If I look out of my office window in Newbury, I can see trees, behind which is the former air base. A road runs roughly parallel to the runway along the entire length of the northern edge of the base, immediately adjacent to the perimeter fence for much of its length, & with a very good view of the runway. The A339 (main road) skirts the SW side of the base, for about half the length of the runway, though masked by terrain & trees. Another minor road runs beside the fence at the eastern end of the runway, with a clear view along it.

 

It was probably the most easily accessible RAF airbase in the UK, except for Northolt - which is inside Greater London . Why do you think it was so popular with protestors? Quick & easy to reach from most of southern & central England, impossible to restrict access. Can't close any of those roads without jamming up traffic for miles around. The countryside around it is full of commuter villages, people who work in Newbury, Reading (where I live - <20 miles away, 250 K people), etc.

 

BTW, when it was vacated, property developers were queueing up to buy it, wanting to build all over it. Prime land, in one of the most expensive areas of the country.

Edited June 2, 2008 by swerve

[swerve]

....

Whats happening with the common now, I gather they actually ripped the runway up and turned it back into common land? Pity all the plans to turn the missile facility in a museum have so far fallen through. IMHO its at least as significant as the missile based in Cuba....

 

There were various short-term uses, e.g. car storage on the runway, & "urban" paintball in some of the airbase buildings. The buildings have now been converted to other uses (e.g. secure data storage by a firm called The Bunker, which also has some other ex-military bunkers elsewhere) or knocked down & replaced by new industrial & commercial buildings - http://www.new-greenham-park.co.uk/

 

The runway has been ripped up. The hardcore went to building sites, I believe. Saved turning a few water meadows into gravel pits, at least for a while. I'm not sure if they left any for the model aircraft clubs that used parts of it after it was vacated.

 

I think the detached bit of land where the USAF had their school is now houses.

[swerve]

Oh well, at least its producing some jobs and paying its way. Far better than what appears to be happening with Upper Heyford.

 

Thanks for that, very interesting.

 

I haven't seen Heyford for a few years. Looked derelict last time I went past. A little bit of 1960s USA rotting away in north Oxfordshire.

[ShotMagnet]

I'm interested.

 

 

Shot

[JN1]

Or imagine, a New Zealand lead renaissance?

 

Sorry, I'm afraid not. From what has come out since '89 it looks like the Soviets had every major world capital targeted to prevent somebody else becoming the new post-war superpower, so Wellington and Brasilia would have gone up with the rest of us.

I like within a few miles of a naval dockyard, naval base and what would have been a NATO Maritime H.Q back in the '80s, not to mention I can see a BACKBONE tower out of the window right now. My survival would have been measured in minutes.

 

Despite all the talk of escalation it seems that nobody in NATO really took that seriously and that if one flew, all would fly.

[Guest Charles]

Sorry, I'm afraid not. From what has come out since '89 it looks like the Soviets had every major world capital targeted to prevent somebody else becoming the new post-war superpower, so Wellington and Brasilia would have gone up with the rest of us.

I like within a few miles of a naval dockyard, naval base and what would have been a NATO Maritime H.Q back in the '80s, not to mention I can see a BACKBONE tower out of the window right now. My survival would have been measured in minutes.

 

Despite all the talk of escalation it seems that nobody in NATO really took that seriously and that if one flew, all would fly.

 

Going from memory here (which is dodgy at the best of times), I believe that from what some RNZAF chap mentioned to me, NZ was targetted by at least 1 SS-17. So that's all the major cities in Kiwi glowing should the balloon have gone up .

 

Charles

[Biscuitsjam]

It's kind of funny that everybody here says "I would have died immediately." Sure, some of you would have, but not all. For instance, there was are 3 major nuke targets in my hometown (adjoining each other). However, my house was 10 miles from them AND upwind. I'm also partially shielded by a large hill. The targets are important enough that the Soviets would probably send multiple nukes at them, but the blast radius of most ICBM nukes is small.

 

In short, I'd have an excellent chance of surviving the initial blast, unless we got targetted by something really big.

 

We'd probably still get some fallout, but we'd be upwind, at least. It's a little harder to predict that...

Edited June 28, 2008 by Biscuitsjam