WW3 in the 70s?

If you take into account the unreliability of the strategic delivery systems, Australia would be largely immune. We are simply too far away and unimportant for the Soviets to waste warheads on. They have much more important targets to strike in the US and Europe. Our cities are too far apart and would not be of interest to them...
In the early seventies? There were more than enough to go around, and Australia hosts US facilities. Pine Gap for example would have been an early target along with Holt station and Nurrungar. Deliberate city strikes depend on a switch to Countervalue targets. Plenty of Soviet subs in the Pacific....
 
What?
The 1970s is well after the Sino-Soviet split exploded into the open and made everyone aware of it. The two had just been shooting at each other in 1969, after all. If China isn't a neutral in the war, it's far more likely to be in the west's corner at this point in the world than the Soviet one.

Though if it does wind-up a neutral and the balloon goes up, it's in the lead to emerge in the post-war world as the leading power assuming the chips fall the right way and we don't get any outlier scenarios.
The Soviets are aware of that and would not permit it. Hence a 'neutral' China would be obliterated.
 
Australia had one naval dockyard in the 1970s - Cockatoo dockyard, in Sydney. Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth had large commercial ports. All are over a thousand kilometres apart. Do you really think the Soviets could afford the number of nuclear warheads to eliminate Australia?
Australia has/had eight significant cites, plus a few other installations. The USSR has (in 1973) around sixteen thousand nuclear weapons.,
 

Darzin

Banned
Could we see new powers in Africa? Assuming Vorster isn't a complete fool, he will make use of a true partnership with African leaders. Aparthied, communism, and consumerism are dead, Someone will have to pick up the pieces.
I imagine in this scenario apartheid would likely stay as most of the countries that pressured South Africa through diplomacy and culture would be destroyed. Apartheid South Africa would be one of the most powerful states in the world in this scenario.
 

ferdi254

Banned
South Africa will revert very fast. Hardly any chemical industry, a huge lack of trained engineers, and in dire need of weapons.
 
I imagine in this scenario apartheid would likely stay as most of the countries that pressured South Africa through diplomacy and culture would be destroyed. Apartheid South Africa would be one of the most powerful states in the world in this scenario.
Could we see Real Partiion then? Bantustans as Verwoerd meant them to be, legitmant states. I am not in favor of seperate development, but have always had a morbid curiosity if their could have been another senario.
 
The Soviets are aware of that and would not permit it. Hence a 'neutral' China would be obliterated.
Assuming that China didn't start tossing things around first looking at improving their position while NATO and WarPac are busy
Australia has/had eight significant cites, plus a few other installations. The USSR has (in 1973) around sixteen thousand nuclear weapons.,
What was the book about life in Australia after a Northern Hemisphere nuclear exchange. Set in the late 50s/ early 60s. They made a movie about it? I just can't remember the name right now.
 

Darzin

Banned
Could we see Real Partiion then? Bantustans as Verwoerd meant them to be, legitmant states. I am not in favor of seperate development, but have always had a morbid curiosity if their could have been another senario.
I think it's possible. The international community who made this impossible by pointing out the farce of and denying them UN recognition is gone. The African states near South Africa will have to tread carefully as they now have a powerful neighbor unrestrained by US and Soviet threats. And a number of them have lost their Soviet Patron.
 
I think it's possible. The international community who made this impossible by pointing out the farce of and denying them UN recognition is gone. The African states near South Africa will have to tread carefully as they now have a powerful neighbor unrestrained by US and Soviet threats. And a number of them have lost their Soviet Patron.
If things get to Rung 44 the Soviets would spare a couple of nukes....
 
South Africa would still suffer, it's main exports have just lost their markets. All of the problems described for Australia above would apply even more so
 
Rickshaw there are until today 4 companies worldwide that produce assembly lines for cars and trucks.
There are today worldwide 7 companies that can produce electricity plants (in the 70s it was 4)

The list goes on. Alone Germany has today 20 companies that hardly have any competition in tool machines or other equipment.

Australia was good at the endlevel of production but the basics were and are sitting in Europe, the USA, Japan and nowadays partly in China.
Today, today, we are discussing a period 50 years ago. I used to work for GMH GM - Holdens where they built cars in the early 1990s before they shut down. The only part of it's assembly line which wasn't made in Australia was a metal press. Australia was basically self-sufficient in the 1970s.
 
In the early seventies? There were more than enough to go around, and Australia hosts US facilities. Pine Gap for example would have been an early target along with Holt station and Nurrungar. Deliberate city strikes depend on a switch to Countervalue targets. Plenty of Soviet subs in the Pacific....
Holt is isolated, Pine Gap, Nurrangar are both isolated, a thousand kilometres (approximately) from any major city. Australia is a complete, empty, continent. A nuclear strike on anywhere has a long way for anything to reach anywhere else.
 
Australia has/had eight significant cites, plus a few other installations. The USSR has (in 1973) around sixteen thousand nuclear weapons.,
Most of which were dedicated to striking the US or Europe. Approximate 30% would have been unreliable. There would not have been many worth dedicating to strike Australia.
 
In 1973 (to pick a date) the US and NATO had two Lance battalions, around a thousand Honest John rockets, Corporal SRBMs, Polaris dedicated to the theatre nuclear role, several hundred nuclear artillery shells, Mace cruise missiles, Sergeant IRBMs and more.
And why on earth would these weapons be targeted against NATO bases?
I was talking about the ability of Warsaw Pact to destroy NATO airbases before the introduction of SS 20
 
The Soviets had become heavy dependant on imported American wheat to feed the population.
In a ww3 food would start to run out fast in the soviet union.
I suspect both sides would refrain from the use of nukes.
Soviets could collapse if the conflict goes on for an extended period due to food shortages if not famine.
It would be a very nasty business.
 
Top