Most likely Midwest city to survive a nuclear exchange?

Well i can tell you for a fact that anything below grayling in michigan is screwed. Saginaw had 3 pointed at it.. midland had 3 .. bay city had 1 .. detroit over 10 ( covering suburbs as well .. flint 4 or 5.. battle creek, kalamazoo.. grand rapids, ann arbor, Lansing, Muskegon, Alpena, Oscoda ( wurtsmith air force base)

these cities would all be toast as they were prime manufacturing cities during these periods. Midland would be toast just for Dow...

Saginaw boasted several foundries during that time frame, plus Saginaw Stearing Gear. and several assembly plants. Flint had bus and truck.. Buick City. The whole darn automotive industry ran from Saginaw down to Detroit..

In Wisconsin.. many of the cities bordering the lake would also get nailed running from green bay to chicago. and around to grand rapids up to muskegon. .. toledo, cleveland, ashtabula, erie, PA
 
I could see a city or two surviving in the UP, but they would get the brunt of the fallout from the nuclear strikes on the Dakotas.

Fallout is going to be the major problem: Screw up crops, mutations in the livestock, etc. I really don't see a major city surviving without food, and theres a very high chance, once the looting dies down, that food is going to have to be trucked in to any surviving city.
 
Well I had though about Marquette but the K.I. Sawyer right there I think it would get hit too. Houghton/Hancock would probably make it but they have a combined total Population of between 7-16K in this time period so they hardly count as "city".


My general feeling is that Michigan would be a complete loss for cities in a complete nuclear exchange, maybe something in the down state Indiana or Illinois, but not too close to either Indy or Decatur since I think both of those get one or more warheads targeted on them.
 
One thing to keep in mind isthat Soviet first strike strategy may have been aimed first at eliminating US NORAD and immediate retaliatory capacity and then using piecemeal city destruction to dictate "peace" to what remained of the US government. In such a scenario a number of large cities in the upper midwest or great plains might escape immediate destruction before both the US and Soviet Union decide to stop killing each other. The biggest problem would be fallout. Even if you don't consider the Dakotas and Nebraska in the "midwest" (there really is no single description of what constitutes the "midwest" - I've seen the entire great plains down thru Oklahoma called "midwest" by some so called experts) the volume of fallout kicked up by hundreds or thousands of impacts in the Dakota missile fields and the prevailing west/east winds would probably render all the classic great lakes "midwest" uninhabitable.
 
Well i would still say you can write off the I-75 corridor between Midland/Bay City and Detroit as toasted crispy critters.. it would be a first strike must as that is where the vast majority of our automotive and manufacturing plants were located. instead of tar and concrete it would be the glowing green glass highway....:eek:



One thing to keep in mind isthat Soviet first strike strategy may have been aimed first at eliminating US NORAD and immediate retaliatory capacity and then using piecemeal city destruction to dictate "peace" to what remained of the US government. In such a scenario a number of large cities in the upper midwest or great plains might escape immediate destruction before both the US and Soviet Union decide to stop killing each other. QUOTE]
 
As a fellow Midwesterner, I do not consider the Dakotas part of the Midwest, nor Kansas nor Nebraska; those are the Great Plains/Plains States.

The Midwest is Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and maybe bits of eastern Pennsylvania.

I'm not sure what part of the Midwest you're from. I know most Minnesotans think of the Midwest as the "5-state area" shown on TV weather maps here:
MN, WI, IA, SD, and ND. Most would include IL, IN, NE, and KS. OH is "East Coast" in our mentality, having more in common with New York than with "us". MO and OK are "Southern"....
 
I'm not sure what part of the Midwest you're from. I know most Minnesotans think of the Midwest as the "5-state area" shown on TV weather maps here:
MN, WI, IA, SD, and ND. Most would include IL, IN, NE, and KS. OH is "East Coast" in our mentality, having more in common with New York than with "us". MO and OK are "Southern"....

In Wisconsin the Midwest is generally viewed as the great lakes states plus Iowa and Northern Missouri (ie St. Louis) minus Pennsylvania and New York.

The Dakotas are seen as part of the great plains.
 
Unfortunately, nearly the entire mid-west lies down wind from the the missile fields in the upper great plains.
FEMA.fallout.map.jpg


Here's a website with the 1990 FEMA maps of projected targets in the US.
http://www.radshelters4u.com/index3.htm#a2
It ain't pretty.
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Wisconsin
 
Based on the above map and links - Grand Rapids Michigan is a good spot to be.

Far enough from the target zones in Michigan to avoid direct effects, and far enough south to avoid the fall out zones from the Missile field strikes to the west. Plus there is farmland to the east and north that will still be usable (still outside the projected fallout zones. As long as the Lansing strike was an air burst not a ground burst they are fine - if it is a ground burst then the Grand River (which flows from Lansing to Grand Rapids) will carry radioactive debris into the middle of GR and it will not be such a great place to be.

Tom.
 
am surprized with that map that there is no intense red blob near colorado springs, one would think quite a bunch of warheads would be aimed at norad there.
 
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