Present Day 3-Way Nuclear War

This list is way, way off.

Particularly for China (PRC), which only has 200-250 bombs.

In addition, China keeps it's nuclear weapons de-coupled from their delivery systems.


Unlike the United States the Chinese military is able to keep secrets. Wikipedia doesn't know crap about China's arsenal. And that's the way China likes it.
 
Oh right, i did think it meant Iran but you are right. Isreal however doesn't own that many. They might have just as much as North-Korea.

I'm pretty sure Israel has enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the Middle East kind of a unspoken truth if we die (Israel) you all die (Middle East)
 
Killing everyone on the planet.

With a thousand bombs? You'd have trouble enough killing everyone in Texas with only a thousand bombs. Every city dweller and family on an army base, sure.

Everyone on the planet? Take hold of yourself man.
 
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China probably has MIRV capability as well, so if it can get 20 missiles here then it might be able to drop 100-200 items on our shore, and that is enough to collapse the country. That's not counting the SSBMs they are believed to have.

US and Russia each have more than enough to warrant either SPF 1,000,000 or a few extra blankets and some soup, perhaps enough to 4-6 months.

Either way, if it turns into an *all-out* war, expect most of humanity to die, perhaps 6 billion+ altogether, and the EMP combined with lingering fallout might make like a lot more painful for the surviviors.

I couldn't think of a more polite way to say it than "wrong."

Wrong.

Most of the time spent writing this post was editing out harsher yet more accurate reflections on the ignorance displayed above.

It's just quite, quite wrong, is all.
 

CalBear

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Unlike the United States the Chinese military is able to keep secrets. Wikipedia doesn't know crap about China's arsenal. And that's the way China likes it.

The number of weapons is less difficult to estimate than you might think. This is especially true when you start looking at launch platforms (It really doesn't matter if a country has 10,000 warheads, if it is limited to WW I Biplanes it has an effective weapon system of zero). There is always some degree of uncertainty, particularily when you get to the "tactical" side of the ledger since you then have the potential of "dual use" aircraft, but strategic weapons are pretty simple.

The figures from Wikipedia have to be viewed with a bit of caution, but they are decent estimates for this sort of discussion.
 

CalBear

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With a thousand bombs? You'd have trouble enough killing everyone in Texas with only a thousand bombs. Every city dweller and family on an army base, sure.

Everyone on the planet? Take hold of yourself man.

Depends on the weapon. Normal weapons, you are correct. Cobalt and Gold salted 25mT weapons, well, now we are talking a different game.
 
Even then, "everyone on the planet" doesn't make a moment's sense.

Ever hear of a Nuclear Winter? 1000(only the russian ones actually like was suggested, more US bombs will detonate plus also hundreds of Chinese) nuclear bombs with an average yield of maybe 200 Kilotons(just a wild guess) exploding almost simulatenously over many heavily populated areas in the USA, Russia and China would seriously affect the climate.

add that up with the devastation of food supplies(both flora and fauna), radiation poisoning and droughts that will follow i don't think many will survive(not even 1%) to the next year.

Especially where the bombs will actually fall you get dead wastelands within weeks. The rest of the world will follow shortly.
 
Ever hear of a Nuclear Winter? 1000(only the russian ones actually like was suggested, more US bombs will detonate plus also hundreds of Chinese) nuclear bombs with an average yield of maybe 200 Kilotons(just a wild guess) exploding almost simulatenously over many heavily populated areas in the USA, Russia and China would seriously affect the climate.

add that up with the devastation of food supplies(both flora and fauna), radiation poisoning and droughts that will follow i don't think many will survive(not even 1%) to the next year.

You're using information that was discredited while there was still a Soviet Union.

Sagan deliberately (and drastically) inflated the numbers so that he could sell nuclear winter as a deterrent. Admittedly, if you're going for academic dishonesty that's a lot better justification than most have. The scientific consensus is distinctly in disagreement with several of the concept's basic premises.

On food. Admittedly it'd be worse now than two generations back because agriculture has become more mechanized. That said, you're still off by orders of magnitude on the subject of damage to food supplies. Not least because damage to the neutrals would be negligible. There'd be more radioactive contamination from hits that took out nuclear power plants than from all the bombs themselves. How many radiation horror stories have been coming out of Sweden since Chernobyl? Heck, how many stories have been coming out of Belarus, right across the border?

Especially where the bombs will actually fall you get dead wastelands within weeks. The rest of the world will follow shortly.

Within weeks you get dead wastelands where the bombs fall? Then it spreads to the rest of the world? What?

No, immediately you get dead wastelands where the bombs fall. What happens after a few weeks is that (assuming no ground bursts) radiation levels fall enough that bugs and rats come in for the carrion and newly arrived seeds can sprout. A couple months later (again assuming no ground bursts), humans can safely move through the area, though no one in their right mind would live there. Make that years, given ground bursts.

I'm ballparking figures ridiculously here, but the issue is the fundamental assumptions about the nature of nuclear war. I haven't seen that kind of argument new-published in much besides trashy apocalyptic novels since I started to read. You're ascribing the attributes of a disease outbreak or forest fire to radioactive contamination, which in fact is closer to a chemical spill in its fundamentals. It's terrible, yes, but the effect rapidly falls off with distance and time. Fallout plumes can spread this dramatically, but we're still talking a small portion of North America's landmass or Russia's territory in percentage terms.
 
I mean the landscape directly surrounding the places the bombs have fallen, plus the craters. In those areas the sun will be blocked longest and radiation will have the most serious effect. Everything will be dead. Except maybe some bacteria.

The problem is it all gets blown into the stratosphere and stays there for decades. No rain to wash it away.

Thousands of bombs blowing up and causing huge fires throw up so much dust and smoke into the air that large portions of the earth will be blocking the sun for a certain percentage that will drop the temperature significantly(as much as -5 celcius when literally talking about thousands of bombs which is realistic), especially in Mid-latitude(tropics won't be affected as much, if at all).

Scientists today(American Geophysical Union for example) said this, they used the oil fires in Iraq in 1991 as an example. They talked about the Earth's hydrological cycle slowing down or something too but i didn't really understand that.
 

CalBear

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Nuclear winter was always a fairy tale. Now a "Nuclear Autumn", where you have a very weak summer or two of some level is possible, depending on the totality of the exchange, but it wouldn't wipe out the human race.

The casualties would be horrific, but species elimination would require something more than a straight up exchange, especially with the vastly reduced U.S. and Russian launch capable throw weight when compared to the height of the Cold War (SALT/START has done a spectacular job in this regard). To get close to the sort of obliteration of life you are projecting you need the introduction of "Doomsday" weapons like the aforementioned salted warheads in some quantity and/or the addition of bio-weapons.

The possible use of engineered biological weapons is the most serious possible danger (salted weapons are, by definition, suicidal, and there does not seem to be the hard core ideological beliefs these days to allow that mindset). Engineered biologicals are slightly less suicidal since you can try to protect your own population, or limit the area of impact, but they are still nearly sure to get out of control. No one admits to a active program, but the Soviet program was never really shut down during the Cold War, even after the Treaty, so the chance remains that the Russians have continued it.

Overall, however, the probable butcher's bill for an exchange these days is no greater than 50%, more likely 25%, mainly from secondary effects, mostly among the population of non belligerent states in Africa and across Southwest Asia. Utterly horrific and the greatest crime against humanity ever, but not human extinction.
 
I couldn't think of a more polite way to say it than "wrong."

Wrong.

Most of the time spent writing this post was editing out harsher yet more accurate reflections on the ignorance displayed above.

It's just quite, quite wrong, is all.

Feel free to post what you wish, I'm curious why you think so.

You may wish to consider looking up Jl-1 missile systems and MIRV technology. Also, in significant global events, the ability to devastate trade and infrastructure is worth considering. There are critical infrastructure points located in remote areas that you might never have heard of which could be compromised with one item. There are concentrations of certain capacities that could be hit very hard with only a few items. And there are key reserves areas along with command posts that could be seriously hurt with a few items. Consider this:

-How much food do you have in the house?
-How many weapons do you keep handy? Can you use them effectively?
-Do you have neighbors that will store supplies?
-Do you have a medical condition that requires chronic medication?
-When was the last time you went 3+ days without power?

In a global collapse or disruption, the immediate aftermath sees a lot of dead people, but the bombs could also kill by disrupting food transportation and medical care afterwards. The health care infrastructure would likely be decimated and saturated with *very* desperate people, so I hope you know someone with some medical training. The US supplies a lot of extra food to the world so much of the Third World will be in danger of starvation. Diseases are likely to increase without WHO efforts in many places. Nuclear autumn is likely to make growing conditions shorter in much of the rest of the world. China provides a lot of its manufacturing base, and if things go all-out expect more than just Europe, China, Russia, and the US to get hit.

Worst case scenario is as listed, but I think between the immediate aftermaths and the secondary deaths caused by infrastructure problems following all-out nuclear war between the Chinese, US, and Russia it would not be surprising to 2-3 billion dead (25-40%). If India is more heavily targeted or some sort of plague runs rampant (say, bioweapons unleashed as a secondary strike) then the numbers can go even higher.

It would be difficult to take out more than this without tossing around a lot more nuclear weapons, and I think that South America and South Africa would be among the safest places to be after all this was said and done.
 
I live in America, a nation with less than 5% of the world's population. I'm irrelevant to the numbers argument.

The numbers you're now suggesting are close to a worse than average estimate for the 1980s, except that you are assuming Australia gets off scot-free. But it's been 30 years. Things have changed. Specifically, force-disparity is for all intents and purposes back to Cuban Missile Crisis levels, if not worse.

What are the realistic scenarios? I'm not sure there are any, not for a three-way, but to ignore reality for a moment.... America strikes first. Or China strikes first. Or Russia strikes first.

If America strikes first, the least likely but least awful scenario, the attack will be entirely counter force. Modern people have a terror of much smaller bombs in much smaller numbers; allowing the possibility of a counter strike where one could be avoided would be inconceivable. Acceptance of civilian casualties in the enemy population has also disappeared since WWII. That means negligible (for a mass nuclear strike) collateral damage and the destruction of a high percentage of the Russo-Chinese capabilities on the ground. The counter strikes would likely fail to take out even half America's population, even if it were the only target. No more than half a billion dead the first two months.

If Russia struck first, there would be some kind of plan for winning the war. A plan that even with unbridled optimism would assume that much of the country's nuclear arsenal would fail to get off the ground, screw up re-entry, or perhaps even miss its targets entirely. The net effect of those MIRV's being to lose batches of warheads to mechanical failure rather than losing them piecemeal. Given the relative strengths, we can know the Russian plan with certainty: a total counter force strike. If they tried to go for pure maximum carnage, the Americans would have far too much firepower left, and Russia would be ruined both in absolute and relative terms. But when they inevitably do try to wipe out American nuclear forces, uncertainty of successful delivery will mandate redundant strikes, further reducing the amount of targets struck. And of course since they're also hitting the Chinese for some reason, their attempts will be spread even thinner. The Chinese probably wouldn't make much of a response, but the Americans would, and boom, there goes Russia. Awful damage to nuclear armed states, except India and Pakistan, but not insurmountable. Maybe a billion dead, half in China, after two months.

The same factors apply to China as to Russia, except more so. They're more sure of their arsenal, but they're also much less of a heavyweight and seriously lacking in delivery vehicles. They can't talk themselves into a first strike clearing the field - there isn't enough insane optimism in the world. So the only kind of plan that would be followed would be a first strike against Russo-American assets and infrastructure in East Asia, banking on the unwillingness of those powers to massacre Chinese civilians. They'd have to have convinced themselves that they'd recover much better from the destruction of their military than their opponents would (again, in theater) thus granting them dominance of the region once they found someone to replace all the dead soldiers. Then they try and the Russians prove them wrong. Perhaps 1.5 billion die, mostly in China.

The global south can grow enough food to feed itself. Remember that the survivors will be disproportionately agricultural. Yes they need fossil fuels to continue that - especially in the worst-hit countries - but those same countries will have lost their main users of fossil fuels. There'll be more than enough left over for agriculture. And the worse the human cost is in lost cities, the better the food situation will be for the survivors.
 
Again, I think your estimate is somewhat on the light side for an all-out war. China alone has 1.3+ billion with America at approx. 315 million and Russia at 146 million. I presume that much of Europe (400+ million) will also get involved along with strikes at US-friendly targets in South Korea and Japan, perhaps with Australia. Turkey and Qatar are also likely to get involved as NATO or countries with friendly bases. Not sure if Taiwan will be exempt or not.

Quick deaths will see the elimination of cities, but the radiation will spill over especially in the US north of the Tennessee-North Carolina line if it is east of the Rocky mountains. Most of the people there are likely to die between the blasts and the radiation unless they are really prepared. Southeastern US will see devastation from military bases being hit, California and the Hoover Dam area will also be laid waste which would affect the water supply for the region. Parts of the Pacific Northwest will be in better shape only because there are areas of that region where there is not much of commercial/strategic value.

Without the US as a global police force I expect to see brushfire wars spring up in different parts of the world, especially subsaharan africa (also reliant on food imports) and economic collapse for much of what is left.

China has so many people crammed into a tight space that I am not sure how many die immediately versus the aftermath, but they are a serious net food importer and trade after this proposed disaster will plummet.

Russia will probably attack NATO-friendly countries in its former satellite states and will certainly lose a lot of her population regardless. the Ukraine may collapse into civil war and will certainly be hit hard. Khazakstan *might* be in better shape but will be subject to fallout from the West and this might give these two countries significant problems. There is a reason I mention them specifically.

Australia may or may not escape, and I expect they will take at least three hits. If Perth, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are gone, then Australia is in deep trouble. Not Mad Max but certainly unpleasant.

Worst case as I see it would be involvement of India, Pakistan, and the Middle East in conflicts. Without the Americans to bolster their presence I do not know what will happen to Israel, nor what will happen in South Asia. If they all go out against each other then there are a lot more deaths and the oil there will be difficult to transport for a long time.

The best places to be that day would be Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand in any case. And even then I hope you're ready for some tough new lifestyle changes in the days ahead.
 
Again, I think your estimate is somewhat on the light side for an all-out war. China alone has 1.3+ billion with America at approx. 315 million and Russia at 146 million. I presume that much of Europe (400+ million) will also get involved along with strikes at US-friendly targets in South Korea and Japan, perhaps with Australia. Turkey and Qatar are also likely to get involved as NATO or countries with friendly bases. Not sure if Taiwan will be exempt or not.

Snipped.

Define "all-out war."

A war of extermination? Sure, I'd come closer to your numbers.

But it's functionally impossible to justify a scenario where the modern states would do so. Given the absurd assumption that this war happens to begin with, there is no justification for the powers to do anything but what I suggested, though I'm happy to argue that if you disagree.

In other news, it looked like you're way off on the impact of fallout, but I skimmed because I want to sleep. Could be wrong.
 
If America strikes first, the least likely but least awful scenario, the attack will be entirely counter force.

Admiral Matt said:
If Russia struck first, there would be some kind of plan for winning the war.

uhm.. Why would there be a difference exactly?

Admiral Matt said:
Define "all-out war."

A war of extermination? Sure, I'd come closer to your numbers.

But it's functionally impossible to justify a scenario where the modern states would do so. Given the absurd assumption that this war happens to begin with, there is no justification for the powers to do anything but what I suggested, though I'm happy to argue that if you disagree.

In other news, it looked like you're way off on the impact of fallout, but I skimmed because I want to sleep. Could be wrong.

Ah, i think i know why you are on different terms with me and M79.

As i see the three-way war being one of full, total extermination of the other nations by all three(btw, the OP said USA, England AND France as the first of the three, even more bombs on more regions)...

Why? Well, its the only result i can think of when the nations launch or notice a launch. Its going to be a holocaust, not a war. If it starts with the launches before any type of alertness or mobilization is carried out. All you can do is push all the buttons and duck and cover.

Of course this can be argued with(as i am no expert about the attitudes towards Nuclear war/holocaust of nuclear powers) but take into mind that my posts and i think that of M79 too are about that scenario and nothing more realistic(though i think a nuclear holocaust is terrifyingly realistic).

The OP was a very general question anyway.
 
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