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DeliciousPatriotism posted:'m curious as to the actual state and quality of Russia's strategic missile arsenal though? Considering how thoroughly hollowed out a lot of units were from corruption and mismanagement, with units missing all kinds of essential kit thanks to it being sold off by people in positions of power without any faith in the work of their own organization.... could their MRBM and ICBM inventories be similarly cored out? One thing Russians have proven to be pretty good at, is rockets. *points to ISS*
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Apr 7, 2022 00:35
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Doccers posted:One thing Russians have proven to be pretty good at, is rockets. *points to ISS* Plus I think this is where most of their money actually goes to. Well other than the yachts. Obviously I've no idea what state their poo poo is in, but I wouldn't want to bet on all of them failing. Even if, let's say, 2/3rd of all missiles blow up in their silos, that's still not great.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:42
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSFbfYtba64&t=71s
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Apr 7, 2022 01:20
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mobby_6kl posted:Plus I think this is where most of their money actually goes to. Well other than the yachts. Especially with MIRVs. 600 of 900 silo-based ICBMs fail, the remaining 300 can still throw a couple thousand independently targetable warheads around.
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Apr 7, 2022 13:53
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mobby_6kl posted:Plus I think this is where most of their money actually goes to. Well other than the yachts. Wasn't 1/3 will blow up or fail to launch and 1/3 will go wildly off target the Cold War estimate of Soviet rocket forces? If it was that bad then, it should be much worse now.
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Apr 8, 2022 10:48
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It's entirely possible their arsenal is barely functioning but the only way to find out is if they launch so we have to assume it is because that is a terrible gamble to take. Plus even if it is if even one is working and gets through that's a city wiped out.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:09
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D-Pad posted:It's entirely possible their arsenal is barely functioning but the only way to find out is if they launch so we have to assume it is because that is a terrible gamble to take. Plus even if it is if even one is working and gets through that's a city wiped out. Yeah, but what's the odds it's MY city? Checkmate libtards 
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Apr 8, 2022 19:07
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Volmarias posted:Yeah, but what's the odds it's MY city? Checkmate libtards And even if they do hit my city, I'm young and have no co-morbidiries so why should I care
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Apr 8, 2022 20:25
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mobby_6kl posted:And even if they do hit my city, I'm young and have no co-morbidiries so why should I care Yeah I mean as long as you're not turned into radioactive dust or burned or anything how could a nuclear attack possibly affect your daily life?? Oh I'm sorry I'm quoting from a US Army manual about NBC procedures from the 80's Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 03:27
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Lots of American military folks just treated their tactics like anything lower than a hydrogen bomb was simply a large artillery shell and didn't need to be worried about other than the immediate impact. In a non-apocalyptic WW3 with only tactical nukes being used on the battlefield the procedures in place would've still caused lots of servicemen to endure varying degrees of radiation poisoning and lingering health effects, including a drastically reduced lifespan.
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Apr 9, 2022 03:30
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my doctor says I'm inflammable so that means I'm immune to nukes
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Apr 9, 2022 04:27
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:lingering health effects, including a drastically reduced lifespan. Thank goodness that doesn't happen to our troops now!
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Apr 9, 2022 05:53
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Yeah I mean as long as you're not turned into radioactive dust or burned or anything how could a nuclear attack possibly affect your daily life?? If you carry a small desk to keep over your head you'll be safe at all times tbh
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Apr 9, 2022 18:17
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If we get all the way to midnight on the Doomsday clock and Russia can't fulfil it's end of mutually assured destruction I'm going to be really, really...upset.
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Apr 10, 2022 16:18
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Outrail posted:If we get all the way to midnight on the Doomsday clock and Russia can't fulfil it's end of mutually assured destruction I'm going to be really, really...upset. Eh, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Bremen fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 16:39
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Bremen posted:Eh, it wouldn't be the end of the world. 
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Apr 11, 2022 00:50
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Current models say that Nuclear Winter is bullshit, so how would a massive catastrophic nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1983 effect, say, Argentina or New Zealand?
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Apr 11, 2022 02:12
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Current models say that Nuclear Winter is bullshit, so how would a massive catastrophic nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1983 effect, say, Argentina or New Zealand? It would still massively mess with climate (or weather in the short term, I suppose). I guess by the 80s everyone was of the opinion that air bursts were sufficient vehicles for delivering megadeaths, so you wouldn't get as much awful fall-out circling the atmosphere. Relatively speaking! On a different part of the globe you'd probably see more cancer rather than more immediate radiation damage. Of course the northern hemisphere would be totally screwed in many interesting and horrifying ways, and that'd still have secondary effects like massive disruption in food production, but the other hand, there'd be less people to feed globally. 80's stuff hasn't been declassified as much as very early, and therefore "outdated" in military terms, stages of the cold war, but it's not that hard to make educated guesses. Dr. Strangelove was a controversial movie when it came out, because they had "accidentally" gotten many actual details right! I think the film studio had to convince some military folks that they had not conducted espionage for the movie, but that might just be a myth. Anyway, global thermonuclear war is wasteful in the sense that due to the fixation on megadeaths, large population centers tend to make for popular targets, which isn't optimal if you're wanting to spread the damage around. And of course some of this is just due to the physical fact that hydrogen bombs are "inefficient" in the sense that so much of the blast is concentrated in the center of the boom, when someone wanting to optimize megadeaths might want to spread the damage around. So, cold war planners "outdid" their plans in the sense that you'd be lobbying around way more nukes than "necessary", mostly at cities, just to be absolutely sure. So, the northern part of the world would be obliterated, but less strategically interesting places would see, again relatively, less out-right destruction. Of course the immediate humanitarian disaster would still be unfathomable, as people not right in the kill zones would probably try to flee their freshly nuclear bombed countries to less hot locations, so to speak. How many would actually make it to remote locations such as NZ is anyone's guess, since even late in the 80's places like ports and airports, even civilian ones, were considered targets of high importance, so there might not be that many ships left lying around in the aftermath. But even from Europe and the USSR, one could conceivably try to move the remaining populations around via land, or that at any rate the remaining populations would try to move themselves, since they'd get hungry and sick, and so on. It's a bit like climate change: It sucks, is horrifying, but it's not literally going to destroy the entire ecosphere. Technological civilization in the nuked areas would be severely impacted, with all the associated effects on populations (mostly people, but a lot of pets would get eaten, etc., too). So it's sort of the end of the world, but also not as literally as one might imagine. Disclaimer: I also think global thermo-nuclear war is a horribly bad idea, do not try this at home under any circumstances, etc. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 12:52
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Rappaport posted:Disclaimer: I also think global thermo-nuclear war is a horribly bad idea, do not try this at home under any circumstances, etc. Yeah nice try you're just trying to keep all the thermo-nuclear war to yourself.
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Apr 11, 2022 14:28
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Outrail posted:Yeah nice try you're just trying to keep all the thermo-nuclear war to yourself. Well Steam does tell me I have a couple hundred hours in Twilight Struggle, but the aim is to try and not have a global thermo-nuclear war. Or at least get the other guy to take the blame.
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Apr 11, 2022 14:42
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Outrail posted:Yeah nice try you're just trying to keep all the thermo-nuclear war to yourself. Total thermo-nuclear annihilation is like the one thing I missed from the 80s, it's a bummer if we can't bring back now.
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Apr 11, 2022 14:45
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I mean I assume a full nuclear exchange between the USSR and the West leads to at least one nuke hitting NZ. If you're launching everything you might as well do the friends and family method of targeting, not just "only the primary target", especially with so much overkill built in. Like how Israel currently has/ might have nukes pointed at major European population centers in addition to their enemies. There is incentive to leave no one standing if you go down.
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Apr 11, 2022 15:01
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I'm European, so I just take it for granted that one or both sides of the Cold War would've thrown nukes my way. I wonder how you'd go about nuking some place like Australia, in terms of targeting. There's large cities, but there's also so much land where people could live. The point of total nuclear war is sort of by definition destroying everything for the sake of destruction, because theoretically that keeps the other guy from nuking you first. So does Australia make the list? NZ? I guess in a multi-polar world it'd be more likely that some war planners somewhere would want to nuke everything around them, rather than just "the West" or "the East".
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Apr 11, 2022 15:09
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That description of Australia also applies to the US and Canada, who are definitely on any soviet/russian nuke list. Hell the same applies to Russia too- probably 3 US/UK/FR missiles are absolutely levelling the relative wastelands of the Northern Fleet's district for every one in Moscow Oblast if full MAD nuclear exchange happened. For better or worse Australia and NZ (and Japan and South Korea and maybe Taiwan too) are in Team USA when you're planning for apocalypse. They're getting pasted if Europe is. Not to mention the current state of the russian arsenal is such that it wouldn't be shocking to see a New York-aimed missile somehow tumbling out of the sky straight into Dunedin. Gottem, those damned kiwi nazis. I don't have confidence in the NATO nukes either. US Air Force was using 0000000 or something like that as a launch key up until that became public. France is one of the most competent militaries on earth after the US and lol. The Uk, just lol. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 15:38
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:That description of Australia also applies to the US and Canada, who are definitely on any soviet/russian nuke list. Hell the same applies to Russia too- probably 3 US/UK/FR missiles are absolutely levelling the relative wastelands of the Northern Fleet's district for every one in Moscow Oblast if full MAD nuclear exchange happened. For better or worse Australia and NZ (and Japan and South Korea and maybe Taiwan too) are in Team USA when you're planning for apocalypse. They're getting pasted if Europe is. Fair enough, at least back in the 80's they certainly had the missiles to spare, on both sides.
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Apr 11, 2022 15:49
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Rappaport posted:I'm European, so I just take it for granted that one or both sides of the Cold War would've thrown nukes my way. I wonder how you'd go about nuking some place like Australia, in terms of targeting. There's large cities, but there's also so much land where people could live. The point of total nuclear war is sort of by definition destroying everything for the sake of destruction, because theoretically that keeps the other guy from nuking you first. So does Australia make the list? NZ? I guess in a multi-polar world it'd be more likely that some war planners somewhere would want to nuke everything around them, rather than just "the West" or "the East". Edgar Allen Ho posted:I don't have confidence in the NATO nukes either. US Air Force was using 0000000 or something like that as a launch key up until that became public. France is one of the most competent militaries on earth after the US and lol. The Uk, just lol.
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Apr 11, 2022 15:50
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Turns out a man called Wren Green did an extensive amount of research and wrote an exhaustive report back in the 80's on the exact question of how a full nuclear exchange between the two superblocs would affect New Zealand. Just the summary is enough to answer all our questions!
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Apr 11, 2022 16:03
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How woud USSR target New Zealand if it's not even on the maps?
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Apr 11, 2022 16:13
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Rappaport posted:I'm European, so I just take it for granted that one or both sides of the Cold War would've thrown nukes my way. I wonder how you'd go about nuking some place like Australia, in terms of targeting. There's large cities, but there's also so much land where people could live. The point of total nuclear war is sort of by definition destroying everything for the sake of destruction, because theoretically that keeps the other guy from nuking you first. So does Australia make the list? NZ? I guess in a multi-polar world it'd be more likely that some war planners somewhere would want to nuke everything around them, rather than just "the West" or "the East". If you want to destroy everything for the sake of destruction, just throw some big dirty groundbursts into every major port and oil-drilling site and watch modern society totally collapse. Nuclear destruction goes well beyond the actual damage caused by the nukes themselves. Destroying major cities and population centers will wreck important infrastructure and badly disrupt resource distribution in general, and the majority of a country's population going up in smoke is gonna have all sorts of side effects. In both the US and Australia, more than 80% of the population is considered urban, and major ports also tend to be major cities as well. Even if you're far enough from both urban areas and military bases to avoid being personally nuked, the disruption to shipping and transportation will be such that you'll get to find out exactly how self-sufficient your immediate surroundings actually are.
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Apr 11, 2022 16:54
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Main Paineframe posted:If you want to destroy everything for the sake of destruction, just throw some big dirty groundbursts into every major port and oil-drilling site and watch modern society totally collapse. You forgot the orbital-height detonation to ruin any unshielded electronics.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:52
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All this just reinforces my decision to live somewhere that's going to be vaporized in the initial moments of a nuclear exchange. If I cannot poo poo post, what is even the point of my life?
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Apr 11, 2022 18:04
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Volmarias posted:All this just reinforces my decision to live somewhere that's going to be vaporized in the initial moments of a nuclear exchange. If I cannot poo poo post, what is even the point of my life? Yeah most of your life is going to be about finding and consuming food, shitposting will simply be a distant, rose-tinted memory.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:11
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Lol if you think I won't quickly end up being the food
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Apr 11, 2022 18:14
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Your shitposting will adapt to a more physical form. Whereas before you had to put your bad opinions on a dead gay comedy forum, you will write them in your own feces on scrap wood and post them where people can see them.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:17
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Volmarias posted:All this just reinforces my decision to live somewhere that's going to be vaporized in the initial moments of a nuclear exchange. If I cannot poo poo post, what is even the point of my life? As morbid as this thought is, I've sometimes tried to figure it out as well. I live in a metropolitan area, sure, but the main targets (presumably) would be a few kilometers around me, so would I get blasted sufficiently quickly, or die from the building crumbling around me? Those nuclear yield calculators seem to suggest a firm "maybe" as the answer. Not that I think my main concern is getting nuked per se, but it's something to think about if sleep isn't forthcoming!
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Apr 11, 2022 18:21
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Rappaport posted:The point of total nuclear war is sort of by definition destroying everything for the sake of destruction Rappaport posted:cold war planners "outdid" their plans in the sense that you'd be lobbying around way more nukes than "necessary", mostly at cities, just to be absolutely sure Rappaport posted:global thermonuclear war is wasteful in the sense that due to the fixation on megadeaths, large population centers tend to make for popular targets Not really tho? Maybe I'm not reading between the lines enough here, but at the risk of being pedantic I want to again bring up something that I read that resonated strongly, I think it was written by someone who worked on targeting strategy during the Cold War: "We don't target cities. We target infrastructure, much of which happens to be in cities." As cruel and horrific the idea of nuclear exchange is, and as callous and misanthropic a job it may be to do the dirty work of aiming the warheads... I don't think those making the strategy are particularly in it for bloodlust and body count (OK, maybe Putin). Nukes are expensive, complicated devices that have a variety of specific purposes. Pointing an epic bacon big chungus Megaton-range warhead directly at downtown Guttenberg, New Jersey - and having it ground burst - just for the kill count is wasteful; it could be much better spent a little bit South, on the port lands. Demoralization of an opponent by wanton destruction of life probably isn't even much of a consideration - that's going to happen no matter where the warheads land. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the insanity of the arms race and the ridiculous warhead count it gave us, was more about redundancy and thorough obliteration of valuable targets, than it was out of some explicit "gently caress with me and I'll kill us all, even those of us in Glasgow, Montana" cynicism. Of course this is all academic when our entire society is built on tightly-packed infrastructure and efficient logistics. Ports, airports, train yards, military bases, financial infrastructure, seats of government, all tend to exist inside cities these days. So the distinction is mostly trivial. You probably knew this and were just exercising brevity (why I said "maybe I'm not reading between the lines"), but I figured I'd bring it up anyway. We're all hosed either way if the Bad Thing happens.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:40
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Isn't one part of the theory behind nuclear winter that since all these huge cities are burning to the ground,a fuckton of poo poo is going to end up in the atmosphere and presumably stay there for a very, very long time?
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Apr 11, 2022 18:42
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Mister Speaker posted:Not really tho? Maybe I'm not reading between the lines enough here, but at the risk of being pedantic I want to again bring up something that I read that resonated strongly, I think it was written by someone who worked on targeting strategy during the Cold War: "We don't target cities. We target infrastructure, much of which happens to be in cities." Yeah, sure, I'm not arguing that cold war planners were somehow inherently more monstrous than their bombing counter-parts in earlier conflicts, it's just that their job was by its nature horrific and very anti-humanitarian. In a way, at least, of course the madness of MAD sort of says that you have to posture as a monster to avoid the actual unwanted "result" of nuclear war. "Just think of the real estate!" Stanislaw Lem raised the question how moral a society can be when its most vaunted experts raise the number of their potential victims to the eight and ninth powers of ten, but few wars have been very nice. I would argue a little bit that the logic of MAD does sort of expect everyone to at least try to maximize their megadeath dispersal power, but as you and other posters have said this is sort of inevitable anyway. The whole point, from the "moral" stance, is that nuclear war should be so horrific that it makes war impossible. That didn't work with dynamite, but we've not sent the thermo-nuclears flying, yet. One interesting question raised by a few thinkers is what would have happened if USSR didn't collapse, and an actual arms race in space would have occurred. That would, in theory, enable proxy wars with few if any direct human casualties, but the counter-point is that we (as a species) would fill the sub-lunar sphere, and then potentially most of our immediate surroundings in space, with all sorts of anti-satellites, anti-anti-satellites and so forth until space was in a perpetual state of war. But I guess that proved just too expensive with the technology of the day. Oh, and on the topic of efficiency, a superior weapons technology, which mercifully the laws of physics seem to prevent, would be a thermonuclear device that instead of a spherical explosion "spread out" its pay-load like a sheet of stellar temperature tin foil, neatly destroying both human life and real estate from a huge area with just the required amount of death-spreading energy reserved for each man, woman, child and train car. Hypothetically.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:52
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Greggster posted:Isn't one part of the theory behind nuclear winter that since all these huge cities are burning to the ground,a fuckton of poo poo is going to end up in the atmosphere and presumably stay there for a very, very long time?
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Apr 11, 2022 19:26
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Greggster posted:Isn't one part of the theory behind nuclear winter that since all these huge cities are burning to the ground,a fuckton of poo poo is going to end up in the atmosphere and presumably stay there for a very, very long time? How much fire would actually result from a nuclear assault, as well as how much poo poo would actually be carried up to the upper atmosphere, is up for debate. Part of the problem is that we don't exactly have much real data on what happens when a modern concrete jungle gets nuked, so there's a lot of variation in the kinds of numbers people are plugging into their simulations, much of which is extrapolated from the destruction of cities in WWII.
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Apr 11, 2022 19:35
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