If either Russia or China launched a massive nuclear strike on the US, would the US retaliate by only nuking the attacking country or both? If the US left either one untouched then they would immediately become the world’s dominant power. To me the most prudent response would be to go full Samson Doctrine and nuke both Russia and China if either country launched a full scale attack on the US.
hit china first
then germ*ny
then china again
swap china for germany (both times) and i can agree with this
>hit china first
>then germ*ny
>then china again
Include France to this list. They literally built the Wuhan Virology Lab and the Taishan Nuclear Powerplant for China. Germany also sold engines to power China's warships and submarines. Macron not long ago even said that China isn't their problem.
Hit China.
Hit Germany and France.
Hit China again.
why do i get so much hate for being german ? :]
It's not you, it's perfidious Germania
>why do i get so much hate for being german ? :]
In October 2021, when Ukraine first used the Bayraktar TB2 against Russian-backed forces to save Ukrainian troops from their shelling, Germany and France openly condemned it:
> https://dw.com/en/germany-france-condemn-ukraine-escalation-call-for-restraint/a-57095476
> https://qirim.news/en/novosti-en/ukraine-has-legal-right-to-self-defence-ambassador-to-germany-on-use-of-turkish-bayraktar-drones-in-donbas/
A November 2021 investigation found German engines in Russian-made drones:
> https://uawire.org/german-engines-found-in-russian-drones-used-by-militants-in-donbas
In December 2021, Germany even refused to allow defensive equipment like drone-jammers to Ukraine:
> https://uawire.org/germany-blocks-delivery-of-anti-drone-jamming-guns-to-ukraine
> https://defenseworld.net/2021/12/14/germany-blocks-anti-drone-guns-sale-to-ukraine.html
While most European states refused to sell weapons to Ukraine, they sold $400M worth of weapons to Russia since 2014 despite sanctions, with 78% of that coming from Germany and France:
> https://telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/22/exclusive-france-germany-evaded-arms-embargo-sell-weapons-russia/
> https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/23/ukraine-france-and-germany-sents-arms-to-russia-despite-eu-blockade-16521171/
post skin
shut the frick up and dont talk on others' behalf
US propaganda for the brainless masses portraying germany as the ultimate evil because we know our political games and will not be weakened any further by geopolitical US backstabbing. I mean c'mon, you can quite literally hear the hand rubbing from the other side of the ocean as europe will be forced to buy LNG by good old uncle sam for another 100 years of occupation and economical and political dependence.
Not like a single ameriturd on here has the ability to see that.
You could try buying your gas from us instead
Not right now obviously as there is some sort of logistical issue being dealt with at the moment but once that's done we are open for business
Who is "you", germany doesn't even have the terminals to take in LNG shipments yet. There are no other noteworthy pipelines except the ones to russia. So you can pick between a lunatic warmongering rogue state or a luantic warmongering rogue state that pretends to be our ally while giving our corpse a good kick down the cliff. I prefer neither of them and instead a return to nuclear, reopening of our coalmines + further fracking in westphalia.
>Who is "you"
Fricking straya m8, you are gonna need more terminals or at least an agreement with someone who has them though cut we can't exactly pipe that shit up the Suez canal
Terminals were never planned, funded or even discussed before because we were too busy licking the bears wiener clean and shiny. It will take years to even get the project even going and another 5+ years due to incompetency in construction and hiring of cheap polish or chink companies. (look at the fricking berlin airport).
So yeah, expect our first order in a decade when we're all frozen solid thanks to the US and especially thanks to Russia.
No worries m8, we're always happy to help
Consider also using other European ports and shipping overland through existing networks, it'll be pricier than russian gas but it beats freezing
>trash your own coal and nuclear power plants becoming a cuck to Russia
>It'S nOt Our FaUlt, WhAt CoUld We dO?!
We didn't just trash our coal plants, in fact, we are still incredible dependent on them because of the awful renewables being unreliable pieces of shit that need backup plants that can jump in at a moments notice at abhorrent costs and environmental damage. No, we literally fricking trashed our mines and poured in 300m of concrete to permanently seal them forever because chink and russian coal was cheaper than to mine it ourselves. In return, permanently sealing our dependency to the east.
Now that is something you can laugh about.
>The German cries out in pain as he strikes you
China doesn't have enough icbms or nuclear subs to execute an effective first strike
They have around 300 warheads total but will likely increase this to 1000 by end of decade. How many are deployed on ICBMs within range of the US? I would guess that they could hit us with at least 100 if they wanted to, more than enough to be completely devastating if used on population centers
The number of warheads would be irrelevant due to how much damage even one is capable of - it's much more important to have that number of warheads spread out with different delivery systems, which the Chinese currently are lacking.
Part of basic nuclear unspoken doctrine is 'nobody uses their last nuke', or really several nukes. Something is always kept in reserve in order to deter more attacks with the threat that it can always get worse. So even if the US were to retaliate against Russia (Russia attacks), we would certainly retain some deliverable warheads. Likely on subs. Those warheads would probably be countervalue attacks. So even then, China could not attack without horrible retaliation.
This would be even more so if China were the aggressor.
That isn't how those delivery systems work. Look up MIRV, which china has. You can think of modern nuclear missiles as more like bombers themselves. You should assume that any missile with multiple warheads is a MIRV weapon.
My personal belief is that the US would wait for detonation, not second (ground radar) confirmation before we contemplated retaliation.
NCA is very strict in all cases
China is committed to China
You can determine the source of a nuclear warhead by inspecting the detonation site. In addition the number of nations that could do this would be very limited. Of them, China is not really one of them.
It is very very unlikely that any nuclear sub could approach the US without being detected and followed. There is a reason that Russian subs stay within the two Bastions and only leave to showboat.
Their icbms are in the dozens, many might just be parade pieces. Also their ability to deliver multiple warheads/decoys like modern western icbms is questionable
Obviously they would cause massive damage, but almost all of the American launch sites/silos would be undamaged
Is that you Dr. Strangelove
>How many are deployed on ICBMs within range of the US?
0
China is comitted to second-use with the caveat that attacks on the three gorges are considered to be nuclear first strikes
Submerged U.S. subs are essentially undetectable by most powers. Foreign subs are easily delectable by the U.S. Gambling that you'll have a successful first strike even if you have Russia's arsenal is moronic. If you're china it's suicidal.
In the event of a Russian or Chinese First Strike, the US would be obliged to launch a corresponding nuclear attack on the other power because there is absolutely no way they're going to be able to tell missiles bound for Moscow from ones bound for Beijing and as a result, would almost certainly panic and launch on warning.
Chinese nuclear delivery systems have nowhere near the level of accuracy of American or or even Russian ones, so their ICBMs would be used to destroy in a countervalue strike against American cities as
said.
I hate to break this to you but in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange, Biden is going to be among the first to die. His movements are fairly well known at any given time and the time from detectable launch to impact with an ICBM is 15 minutes at best. That wouldn't even be enough time to get Air Force One off the ground and out of the blast radius even if it was fueled up and you skipped pre-flight check.
In the event China or Russia decide a first strike against the US is the best option, they’d place nuclear ballistic missile subs off the coast of Washington DC. From launch to detonation would be like two minutes. Nobody in DC would make it in such a scenario.
>place nuclear ballistic missile subs off the coast of Washington DC
>assuming we wouldn't hear them coming and going
We OWN subsurface warfare.
Would they open fire and sink the enemy sub without a declaration of war?
I refuse to speculate what the TS RoE are for a US sub commander operating in secrect are, muchless the state of mind of a Capitalist Imperialist Terrorist US Captinsky.
yes, absolutely
>us navy notices chinese nuclear ballistic sub entering us territorial waters or approaching Washington
>send them multiple warnings to leave us territorial waters now
>presumably get no response
>just fricking sink it
that's what i assume the procedure to be anon because the same goes for planes as well
why do you think all the Chinese or Russian bombers and jets leave the western/east asian airspace the moment they are told to do that?
because they know they'd just fricking get shot down without second thought
Territorial waters aren't that large, you wouldn't need to be inside them for a depressed trajectory frick Washington strike.
True but it's not like US detection suddenly ends when you cross the border into international waters. They may not be able to legally tell a foreign submarine to frick off but you can bet they're tracking them, and any subs from a known nuclear power that have decided to travel near the american coastline are being watched like a hawk. Your nukes have a shorter travel time yeah, but they know where you are and probably already have missle defenses pointed in your direction.
Besides hitting DC first, even if you do get most/all of the politicians, is not going to prevent a counter strike. A lot of America's nuclear war scenarios straight up ASSUME that the capital is getting hit almost immediately. DC being rendered a radioactive swamp within the hour is practically factored in.
DC being turned into a radioactive swamp might actually improve American politics, especially if congress is in session at the time
>monkey's paw: massive nuclear strike on DC causes mass casualties among American government, first 13 people in the line of succession have died, please stand for Acting President Pete Buttigieg
Can't be worse than the other 13 guys who died, but now he knows he's got some skin in the game and needs to take the job seriously
I'd assume once they detect the sub in US waters they'll tell it to frick off or get sunk and that they would be perfectly willing to follow through on that threat if it doesn't listen. China will b***h and moan but no one else is gonna call them out for attacking a heavily armed military vessel trespassing in their territory after giving it multiple warnings to leave or be fired upon.
But yeah as a first strike they wouldnt be able to completely destroy our ability to hit them back. Their force is more countervalue
They have Quantum tech nukes that can detonate over ten cities at once.
...you mean MIRVs?
Implessive
the amount of warheards is irrelevant
the strike type is what matters
if its airburst then its not really that much dangerous it will kill people left some glowBlack folk probably charge up those cia glow inthe sky even more but thats it..
but if its an actual nuke strike on the ground then its a totally different beast those strikes are meant to destroy and render an area disabled for good
also the type used is important
atomic bombs arent really that much destructive compared to hydrogen bombs..
and both of them looks like a firecracker to whoever master actual pure fusion bomb tech
whoever managed that not only will have power second to only antimatter(100% reaction vs 89%)but can literally conquer the world no questions asked
Airburst detonations maximize overpressure meaning more destruction on the ground, but at the cost of leaving behind only minimal fallout as a result.
>the strike type is what matters
>Airburst detonations maximize overpressure
Airburst would be used to strike soft targets and as a rule counter value (city) targets. They maximized the area damaged.
Ground burst would be used to strike hardened targets. Less area is damaged, but the point of detonation is able to destroy a hardened target that any true airburst would not.
Fallout does not play into that targeting decision.
Just a couple of guys trolling you.
A lot of that is big nothing. You will find far more US tech in Chinese hardware.
It is unlikely they would inform the sub that it had been detected and was being followed.
They do this (or used to do this) to keep them secure from their own internal politics. Rumor has it that a few were nearly stolen at one point in a power play.
china is extremely secretive about their nuclear weapons: they hide them in an enormous underground complex so that nobody can know the true number.
At that point its all-in. Russia and China both gets glassed and NK and Iran will get some too.
I don't think a bidet hoax government would nuke China. 100% Russia though.
>he thinks the president has any power over the military in a ww3 scenario
That's partly why the US uses SSBNs as the primary leg of the triad; they're survivable enough that you can hold a few missiles back to deter the *next* opponent.
For more nucular strategery, read the first half of this: https://pastebin.com/cWs6A7rR. And remember, The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play... but if one is forced to play, it's all a question of how *much* you're going to lose... and you need a few survivable warheads in order to not lose *everything* to somebody who still has nukes.
How would the US even know which country was responsible if the attack was sub based? (At least know within the ~5-15 minute window the US would have to make a decision). And once the US has sustained damage in a first strike there's a good chance that early warning satellites/radar will be non operational so detecting any further attacks will be difficult.
>How would the US even know which country was responsible if the attack was sub based?
NATO records the entire spectrum in real time, the whole thing, globally in real time. Yes really and the internet as well.
The US has at least a vague idea of where everybody else's boomers are at any given time. It would be difficult for, say, a PLAN SSBN to pretend to be a Russian boomer.
Also, in a limited attack like that, it's entirely possible that the US would ride out the attack and then try to figure out who was going to get nuked in response. In a major attack, there would be a significant ICBM component, which would leave no doubts. Plus, of course, the NSA, DIA, et al, would be picking up chatter; if nothing else, than as the strike progressed and the attacker sought to prepare for a counterattack.
If it's just one rogue submarine then it's possible the missile defense systems would get them and even if not, US can absolutely survive without a major city or two. It could even have a positive effect on the country as a whole, as a limited nuclear strike would serve to galvanize the population against an external enemy - see 9/11. So no need to nuke anyone else, at least not until they're publically identified and global community agrees with a reprisal for breaking the nuclear taboo.
If it's a whole fleet then chances of US knowing who the subs belong to and even detecting the strike before it happens incerase exponentially, and it's not like there are that many countries out there that own a fleet of nuclear submarines, so it might just be decided that nuking every possible culprit is acceptable.
Goddamn nuclear war would suck.
Yeah I think it's likely if the US were to get in a thermonuclear exchange with either it'd be impossible to avoid dragging the third in.
Hell the state of detection systems and the paths ICBMs take would almost guarantee it alone. Missiles heading to Siberia look like they are heading at China and vice-versa, you'd need some very cool heads to prevent "retaliation" in that circumstance.
In the event the war settles down in a day or so after the initial exchange (best case scenario) it'll probably start back up again because everybody will loose almost all their satellites and by extension most of their early warning capabilities and will be nervous as frick expecting another strike and this could lead to a sort of trigger happy launch.
The amount of people on this board that learned that they were lied to about the "total annihilation of all life" aspect of nuclear war and now take a rather blasé attitude toward nukes as a response is alarming.
>The amount of people on this board that learned that they were lied to about the "total annihilation of all life" aspect of nuclear war and now take a rather blasé attitude toward nukes as a response is alarming.
This has been a genuinely concerning trend with a lot of people you take the time to explain modern nuclear war with. A period of surreality at the notion that nuclear war isn't as unthinkable a decision as the thought, followed by the almost cope-like idea that "eh, I don't think I live next to something *that* important, so I'll probably survive."
The real horror for most of the population would follow. Total economic and grid collapse. Likely even from just a couple of warheads even if not aimed at cities.
>Also, China is not the ally Russia pretends it is.
they are fully aware that China looks at a lot of Russian territory and thinks 'yeah, I could use that'. They just currently have a common enemy in the US, but even then they see it more as a common competitor of high threat and understand that each other is more likely to be a true enemy.
You vastly over estimate what a nuke can and would do. There is a lot of modern media that is still very influenced by 1980's Soviet propaganda and manipulation.
The new series of Russian subs are supposed to be pretty good. We don't know for sure how good though and while there was one very public 'off the coast' mission conducted by one the rest appear to stay in the Bastion. But I suspect you are correct, though it may not be 'easy' any more. Just doable and dependable. But not easy.
That is a big question. The assumption is that while the Russians frick around with corruption in the rest of their military it is assumed that they take that part very seriously. Yet there have been some indications that is not entirely the case.
>because there is absolutely no way they're going to be able to tell missiles bound for Moscow from ones bound for Beijing
Beijing has no way to detect warheads that are incoming and certainly not at the range that they would be on their way to Russia and then China would panic. Russia cannot detect incoming missiles prior to their hitting and detonating soon enough that Russia could react. Both countries have to absorb a strike and then choose to retaliate and how.
An attack on one would result in an immediate phone call to the other (maybe not immediate immediate of course) and inform them of the situation and that they are not threatened.
>The real horror for most of the population would follow. Total economic and grid collapse. Likely even from just a couple of warheads even if not aimed at cities.
This. So much this. And the frustrating part is that a lot of this can be prepared for; not just at the individual level, but using proper Civil Defense. But we don't do that anymore, because the doomposting from the '60s-'80s convinced too many people that there was no point in bothering with it.
If you don't live near an actual strategic target (if it doesn't have nukes or issue or relay nuclear launch codes, it isn't generally worth a warhead), then ordinary, garden-variety prepping is what you need to focus on (plus some industrial-grade plastic to seal up your doors and windows for the first two weeks in order to keep any fallout from getting inside).
I couldn't agree with you more. Other than perhaps to express my dismay at how we let the coof nearly crush us and then I think about what would happen from panic if even one warhead went off. Perhaps not even in the US.
>because the doomposting
If you take steps to survive, then you must want it to happen. We basically got emotionally blackmailed into holding our own population hostage for a hostile foreign power.
And yeah, a lot could be done on the Civil Defense side. Not to mention the individual side. If we could keep things stable for just a few months without panic we could fix nearly anything such that the panic doesn't happen. But we turned away from that.
And it isn't like this prepping is just for nukes, any local disaster could be much better dealt with if we had a real Civil Defense system. Probably save hundreds of lives every year as it is.
Fricking criminal man.
>The amount of people on this board that learned that they were lied to about the "total annihilation of all life" aspect of nuclear war and now take a rather blasé attitude toward nukes as a response is alarming.
It's not that nuclear war doesn't terrify me. It's that if the Russians seriously attempt to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield or as blackmail to solidify ill-gotten gains, then we're wasting our time trying to reason with these people and should strike first in order to ensure our own survival. Caving in would essentially guarantee such a war later down the line anyway.
>If either Russia or China launched a massive nuclear strike on the US, would the US retaliate by only nuking the attacking country or both?
Real answer. The fact is threat the US/EU/NATO/G7 are so vastly more powerful economically, culturally and militarily that it is quite unlikely that either in particular a Russian but also a Chinese first strike with nuclear weapons would succeed although be couple of western cities may be destroyed or some military installations. HOWEVER the price would be far far far more than the Russian or Chinese populations wish to suffer, the US and Allies would not use nuclear weapons in retaliation, simply destroy the government, military and designate the population slaves in compensation for the war crime of launching a nuclear first strike. The west is pretty moral so with pressure from people like the Pope and others they might get actual genocide held back and it might only be forcible sterilisation of all adults so something but in the end, the reparation would be all of china or Russia and the historical end of teh Russian or Chinese populations in ANY way connected with the administration, so for example the populations of Moscow/St. Petersburg/Beijing/Shanghai. the US has had the capacity to destroy ICBMs in the late 80s and the Europeans since the mid 9i0s and since 2000 the capacity to kill every living thing in Moscow without damaging a brick so yeah, whatever OP. The Russian or Chinese meh state really matters I'm sure, except it does not really, sorry.
meds. now.
The fact you don't even grasp that it is quite likely any retaliation by the US/NATO would be 'conventional' that is non nuclear and immediately end hostilities just shows me you are some belligerent brainwashed idiot from one these two failed/failing states which are so far behind the US and EU and G7 and NATO that you may as well be comparing Napoleonic armies with cold war ones
it only takes 40-50 weapons to be detonated an worldwide food production will hal due to global dimming. so nobody really knows what the responses would be. the less nukes the better.
There were hundreds of nukes detonated in the atmosphere during the nuclear arms race. You sound like the morons claiming global warming would destroy the planet by 1990.
The issue is "at once".
Global dimming would solve climate change btw
You missed the part where Saddam lit a thousand oil wells on fire. The science... turned out to not be quite so settled.
Global dimming would be a change in the climate brought about by human activity AKA anthropogenic climate change.
It wouldn't solve shit, just move us on to a different set of problems
With giant space mirrors you can, in theory, do global scale climate control. And giant reusable rockets are on the horizon, so someone might try it.
Space mirrors dont address the core problem and in particular do exactly nothing to counter pollution and habitat loss
They would be worse than useless because of all the money spent and CO2eq produced during the operation, both of which could have been better used elsewhere
They would prevent the immediate civilization destroying consequences of a significant band of the equator suddenly experiencing seasonal highs above the absolute survival limit of humans (55°C heat index) and subsequent mass human migration, we can deal with sad salmon and open pit mining later.
Or we could deal with them now and never have to worry about overheated browns in the first place.
All of the tech neccesary to end climate change as a threat exists and is widely available right now.
Anthropogenic climate change is a purely political issue at this point, the only thing holding us back is c**ts in suits
a) in the atmosphere - so less dust thrown up
b) over the course of 50 odd years, not all at the same time
Not over major cities, dumbass.
The threat posed by fallout is not quite as great as previously believed. Latest projections do not see great ash clouds blotting out the sun and it is more or less considered that Sagan and the gang were just trying to scare the shit out of people to prevent itchy trigger fingers from starting WW3. Not that nuclear war is not a horrifying maelstrom of destruction, it's just that ground bursts are inefficient and air burst attacks are far more likely in the vast majority of nuclear strikes, and they produce very little ejecta that would go into the atmosphere.
This isn't just conjecture, it's also moronic.
Bait
Only the attacking country. Also, China is not the ally Russia pretends it is.
I highly doubt russian or chinese nukes can even reach mainland US.
Both mentioned nations are paper tigers with inept militaries and even worse leadership.
Oh I'm sure they can, but I seriously doubt they can hit what they're supposed to hit
Putin has been spending significant sums of money on the Russian nuclear forces, more than the conventional forces. Assuming they don't have enough functioning missiles is optimistic in the extreme, especially since the ability to intercept them is minimal.
>Putin has been spending significant sums of money
This is the only irrefutable statement in the post. I think everything can be questioned in terms of what the Russians are actually spending said money on. What better to cheat on that a weapon that will never be used?
>either one untouched then they would immediately become the world’s dominant power
How so? Russia is a third world shithole with worse economy than a single Poland.
China and US can both disappear from the face of the earth and Russia still wouldn't be the dominant power.
This Ukraine war has proven that Russian military is a joke.
Without US or China, the dominant power will come from EU or one of the major economic powers like Japan or South Korea. Or large population countries like India and Brazil.
>if the US left either one untouched then they would immediately become the world’s dominant power
this might be true for China but it sure as frick would not be for Russia lmao
Russia is way down the line in the waiting list and you'd probably have to wipe out not only NA but also entirety of Europe and half of Asia (even outside of China) for Russia to even have the shot at becoming the world's leading country.
I know they have nukes but jesus christ their economy is half that of fricking Italy at this point for frick's sake.
this tbqh
>"Let me die with the Philistines!" Judges 16:30
Judges is unironically one of the most /k/ino books of the Old Testament
In for a penny, in for a pound.
The difference between nuking russia or nuking russia and china is about 300-400 chinese nukes, with most unable to reach the USA.
That's not the kind of additionnal destruction you would worry about if you are fricked anyway.
Destroying Russia means glassing Moscow and about 15 or so cities.
You do that and they lose the best quarter of their population. Moscow alone would net you about a tenth of that.
Even at a hundred nukes per city, that's plenty of nukes left to finish the nearly defenseless chinese.
So frick China.
all im reading here is that we should nuke china because they wont be able to do shit
sure us would become global pariah for a while for just casually wiping out billion people but whats the rest of the world going to do
other than china there is no one else even close to actually rivalling the us (other than united EU but that has not happened yet, and half of yuros would probably actually welcome the nuking of the eternal chink anyway)
The world won't really be any better off until 75-85% reduction in global population.
>sure us would become global pariah for a while for just casually wiping out billion people but whats the rest of the world going to do
>implying the rest of the human race wouldn't be absolutely delighted to see the yellow vermin who literally unleashed a biological weapon on the rest of the planet get their just deserts
Every last fricking Chink deserves to be exterminated for that COVID shit alone
I love how Myanmar is included in that image. Agree 100%.
Just cut out of the western half of China, and drop the nuke on the eastern half.
If the USA nuked China without a very good reason, it would be nuked into oblivion, possibly even by its former allies
No nation would take nuclear retaliation against the US. However, even if it was seen as justified, there would likely be strong political price to be paid from the more 'nukes R bad' nations in Europe. If there was no justification the US would likely be quickly politically and economically isolated. More so than Russia today by a long shot.
>it would be nuked into oblivion
by who?
who would be left with the capability?
You don't need to hit all of Russia in any context of nuclear war. You just need to drop it around Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and Vladivostok in the far east.
The rest of the country will leave Russia on its own. Russia at its core it just the Northwest. The rest is occupied land.
Anne poster right you know.
Hit Russia with everything. The French/British might not have much, but it's enough to be an effective deterrent to china whilst the US rearms and NATO dismantles vatnikstan.
Why are the russians nuking Liechtenstein?
nukes are fake. Hard to believe people still buy that gay shit.
the US would only strike the nation that attacked it or its allies. Why would it do anything else?
The US would be destroyed in the first strike, they would have nothing to retaliate with.
>I have no faith in the current administration to strike counter value (city) targets.
The US would only ever resort to countervalue in response to the Russians/Chinese already escalating to that themselves. I wouldn't put it past the Russians to just escalate straight to a countervalue strike though, especially if the number of serviceable warheads they have is actually substantially smaller than claimed (as is commonly asserted on this board).
I wouldn't even call countervalue war honestly, I would call it for what it is. Genocide, in its purest and most indiscriminate form.
My comment about not having faith was on the assumption that even if the Russians (or more likely Chinese) did start hitting counter value targets that I didn't think that our current administration would respond in kind. Even if it was justified or needed. I just don't think they would do it under any circumstances. And lacking that as a credible threat means that a certain level of deterrence is lost in my opinion.
It doesn't necessarily make sense to go countervalue. If the enemy is going slightly countervalue, then it makes sense to reply in kind in order to dissuade them from continuing to do so. However, if the enemy is going full-out countervalue, then it makes the most sense to go full counterforce in a desperate attempt to remove their ability to keep hurting you. In reality, the military recommendation to POTUS would depend upon all sorts of very specific circumstances. That's why nuclear wargames are useful for training the folks responsible for making the plans and (if it ever came down to it) deciding which ones to recommend.
I don't disagree with you here. My point is that it has nothing to do with what does or does not make sense. The point I was making was that I have no faith in the administration in this area. The later point being that this harms over all deterrence.
We really aren't disagreeing on anything here.
>Biden is going to be among the first to die
Perhaps. It makes sense to attack the President if you believe that would delay a response (launch order) that was critical for the success of your attack. But NCA is pretty solid and it may not be possible to stun/pause NCA communications. Biden is not the only ones that can order an attack in the event of an attack.
The downside of killing the President is that you might have a firm understanding of what he may or may not do and in fact desire the choice he would make. But perhaps the biggest problem is that it is valuable to leave someone on the other side that can negotiate an end to hostilities and that person will be recognized by all actors as legitimate and his decision binding. There is also the further risk that you may enrage the people who would make the decision on retaliation and that they may respond far more harshly than you otherwise expected.
So he may die, and there are good reasons to do it. But he may not and there are good reasons to not do it.
>That wouldn't even be enough time to get Air Force One
I suspect that the Secret Service has identified several areas closer as potential shelters. After all, if they are targeting the President they will probably strike the location of Air Force One as well (air burst). I wouldn't be surprised if they just flew him in a random direction out of the city, they could move him easily 20-30 miles depending on when they started moving him. No real defense against a boomer shot though.
Sure, NCA could theoretically order an attack without authorization (or even permission) from the President, but the decision-making to do so is still going to take several minutes at least (it is grossly exceeding their authority after all). Every minute of delay is more Russian missiles getting clear of their silos before American ones can knock them out.
>I suspect that the Secret Service has identified several areas closer as potential shelters. After all, if they are targeting the President they will probably strike the location of Air Force One as well (air burst).
The problem with moving the President to a safehouse or something is that the streets will be full of absolute pandemonium the moment the first warning is issued. Trying to move him in the Presidential limo would likely result in being caught out in the open by the blast, moving him by Marine One would similarly result in the helicopter being knocked out of the sky by the EMP or pressure wave, both of which go much further than the actual blast.
Even if you did manage to get him to a bunker in time, it might very well simply wind up becoming a tomb. Adjacent buildings collapse and destroy the bunker. The entries and exits become blocked by debris, and since the location of a Presidential bunker is usually kept secret, no one bothers showing up to dig it up. Radiation gets into the air filtration system and in a few hours/days, everyone's vomiting/shitting blood as their internal organs melt.
Even if none of things occur, given his unpopularity, Biden could just as easily wind up being lynched by an enraged mob who blame him for starting a nuclear war.
In the end, I think unless the US is the one striking first, the President's chances of survival are rather slim.
>Be US government
>Have antimatter zapper
>First strike motherfrickers with zapper
>No launch signature
>No detectable isotopes
>Short-lived gamma activation
>Propagates at relativistic speed in the upper atmosphere
>Destructive yield scalable in multi-megaton range
>Bonus can ~~*allegedly*~~ be used as a terminal phase interceptor system
>Make nuclear war obsolete
Dugway Zapper™, the next evolution in first strike capabilities...Dugway Zapper™, if you need nukes after, you did it wrong.
All jokes aside, this is the most logical progression. Zapper first because it would be obviously the hardest to figure out where it came from or who really even did it. Nukes are for when someone finally does and offensive enemy ICBMs are in the air or for a retaliatory strike. We zapper the shit out of the North Koreans in 2005 and no one said a word about it because no one knew who the frick did it or what actually happened. There might be suspicions, but I imagine you would want some hard evidence like launch signatures or isotope analysis instead of randomly lobbing nukes on a hunch.
>scaler weaponry
Lol, we are going to frick ourselves just like the previous iteration did 12500 ya
Buddy, this has almost nothing to do with Tom Bearden's bullshit. I say almost, because he mentions the role phase conjugation plays in his nonsense which is an actual part of the whole zapping process but not anywhere close to how he describes it.
Would it matter? If even a few nukes went off anywhere, that would be the end of human civilization. If any survived the resultant collapse of all societies on Earth, they would be not many left, and they would all be diseased and living with 1800s tech. Nukes are why WW3 hasn't happened and never will. No one, not even an insane psychopath like Putin, wants the world to end.
I would imagine some people would pull through, but not many
OP's reminds me of playing DEFCON, whole map is a nuclear wasteland by the end of the game almost every time
Japan survived just fine.
That was few kiloton bombs. Imagine a few 10 MEGATON bombs going off. Educate yourself, dumbfrick.
Educate yourself on the square-cube law. It takes a whole lot more energy to slightly increase the radius of effect. Beyond a few hundred kilotons, you're at the point where you need a large amount of extra bomb fuel in order to do more damage. That's why yields have gotten smaller as delivery systems have gotten more accurate. Even the Russians aren't really using 10MT+ warheads anymore.
No, it would not end human civilization. The resulting panic, fear, and economic dislocation would disrupt a number of societies, but civilization writ large would survive. It might or might not be as advanced as it had been, depending on which countries got involved and how badly they were hit, but it wouldn't wipe out humanity or anything like that. For example, if India and Pakistan traded their few hundred warheads with each other, several million people would die outright, and potentially several hundred million would starve over the next year or two (it would depend heavily upon whether the US got involved with food aid). But the rest of the world would be largely unaffected, outside of a severe recession as many urbanites tried to relocate away from the cities all at once.
Absolutely correct. The only reason why Russian field-able nuclear weapons were created in the multi-megaton range is because their CEP was absolute shit. If your guidance system puts you half a mile from the target, you need a big boom to make sure you even hit anything. I can't remember where I read it, but the DoD/DoE did a study on strike efficacy versus yield and determined that after 250kt, the "returns" diminished significantly. Especially when the US can put a MIRV from a Minuteman III through a front door. There is a video of a reentry test where they did exactly that during a RV test from Peacekeeper MX missile.
I don’t believe our doctrine calls for anything but a retaliation in the case of receiving a first strike.
It’s uncertain wether or not CN subs will be able to launch before being sunk. Theoretically if they time things well enough it may be possible. China will disappear as a result, though, so the possibility of such an attack is 0. The whole purpose of the CN nuclear arsenal is to deter the US from regime-changing their shitty CCP to begin with.
Anyway stop worrying. The world is shifting towards just letting corrupt, hopeless shitholes stay that way.
So the issue I would take with this is that you appear to be falling into the common pattern of 'all nuclear exchanges are total exchanges'. But that is not the case.
Take China for example, China could use a nuclear warhead to strike a US carrier group - perhaps all in the region. The US would of course like to respond, but that response is not going to be to destroy all of China.
In fact, the US may find it hard to respond at all. China has struck a 'pure' military target and in doing so harmed not a single true civilian. They have caused no damage to any civilian target or asset. Purely a military strike.
The US would struggle to find a reciprocal target. Almost anything we would strike with a nuke would result in tens of thousand of 'innocent' civilians being killed. How does the Biden administration sell that to the world anti-nuke order? Who is the going to look like the worse bad guy?
Especially if (and they would) China is holding a bunch of deliverable warheads back with the threat of 'you hurt our civilians, we hurt yours'.
So it is not just the possible international political cost, but there is also a threat of 'escalation'. Especially if other nuclear powers (say Russia) jump in right away to talk about how the US needs to deescalate the situation before things get out of hand etc.
>The US would struggle to find a reciprocal target
No need to find one. A stern warning is more than enough to crush China.
>current "absorb 1st strike only" EO on the books still from Clinton
>ye olde nukes are only papered over through 2029 -- then a gap with the nuke sub numbers and readiness
>passed up opportunity during Able Archer 83 exercises and won't again (Brezhnev was dying; balked at giving the Iron Triangle of Party-Security-Military entirely over to the military)
Nu Sino-Soviet block has always planned around joint first strikes, with the theory being once Force-On-Force strikes prevail, the other side is forced to negotiate. Russian nihilism and Chinese planning being framed in light of "wtf Nazi Germany's Lebensraum problem is literally me" while openly bragging about colonizing the Lower 48 after using bioweapons = more likely than it ought to be, given the demographic implosions baked in the cake and the economic fallout therefrom for those two incentivizing them to blow their load now rather than later.
>muh fallout
Airbursts from hydrogen bombs is trivial. Worry yourself over cobalt sleeved drone torps Russia has that have deliberately nasty and long lived radiation.
>Sampson Option
Out on the speculation branch: all the 'global warming' hullabaloo and projections for the US having radically altered coastlines as if there was a second biblical Deluge are actually teasing retaliatory strikes in the form of melting the polar ice caps with nukes. Most of China's coastal; Northern Russia and its fleet gets swamped without triggering any 'Dead Hand' automated retaliatory strikes.
For the Soviet Defector literature angle on worse case scenarios brewing:
https://jrnyquist.blog/2022/06/04/beijings-war-plan-an-interview-with-lude-media/
https://rumble.com/v16gr9t-episode-1890-war-room-special-the-coming-war-over-taiwan.html
https://rumble.com/v16gs6v-episode-1891-war-room-special-the-coming-war-over-taiwan-cont..html
what interests me is that if russia uses a tactical nuke in ukraine then wouldn't china be obliged to protect ukraine? now i know china would not nuke russia in return but perhaps they'd cease diplomatic relations?
Russia has no working nukes.
If they've been actively stealing the shit out of their conventional military they actually had to use multiple times in the 90's 2008 etc and still didn't stop stealing.
Imagine the state of their unicorn nuke program that nobody not even generals think will ever be used.
Nobody thinks Putin will ever tell them to use the missiles for anything other than parades unlike the conventional forces where you need to keep some of them functional.
>It will only ever be a joint strike. "There are no upper limits to military cooperation between our countries ..."
I don't see how that happens as a practical act. In any case where the US and X get into a nuclear exchange Y benefits the most by staying out of it and letting their global rival and regional rival destroy or badly damage each other. X/Y can be either Russia or China, it works either way.
The statement about cooperation is just propaganda. Not propaganda aimed at the West to intimidate the West, but aimed at each other. Sure, if you look at it as a board game you and your buddy Bob teaming up for global win makes since. But this is not a board game and Bob is not your buddy at all. China especially looks at Russian territory with rubbing hands.
>if russia uses a tactical nuke
Chinas response would largely depend on how bad the international response is. They would most likely attempt to soft ball their response in any event. Most likely China would have to go along with a good chunk of European/US political response. However, there is a chance that they may not and only talk about 'how regretful the event is', China is trying to become less dependent on Europe/US economically with a lot of moves towards Africa/SouthAmerica. They are not there yet, but it may impact their response.
And I don't think there is any chance of Russia doing that. There just are no real targets in Ukraine.
>The only reason why Russian field-able nuclear weapons were created in the multi-megaton
I would say there was strong psychological warfare and internal propaganda aspect as well. But all of us used larger bombs because our guidance was not that great and as our accuracy went up, we use smaller bombs. But certainly you are largely correct. Just pointing out there are some other interesting aspects to consider.