In the 1980's there was speculation that the Soviets could have planned on using very large (ie. 20MT plus) warheads against key burried targets such as the launch control bunkers for ICBM's. The larger warheads were seen as compensating for doubts about the accuracy of Soviet ICBM's.
Protect and Survive: A Timeline
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In the 1980's there was speculation that the Soviets could have planned on using very large (ie. 20MT plus) warheads against key burried targets such as the launch control bunkers for ICBM's. The larger warheads were seen as compensating for doubts about the accuracy of Soviet ICBM's.
Did the soviets have enough 20 MT nukes for taking out control centers?I imagine such powerful weapons where relatively few in number.What targets would the US have hit with above 5 MT nukes?I imagine some hardened soviet bunkers since above ground targets would be taken out by 500 kt to 1 MT bombs.Also are there any estimates about the number of bombs detonating in countries like West Germany,France,Great Britain and China?The USSR and US would have received each more than 1000 hits but the others?
Holy shit! I can't imagine how scary scary that must have been!
Typical Soviet strategy, if you can't guarantee accuracy, you can take it out anyway.
New York. Washington. Paris. London.
Well with West Germany you would have to factor in tactical nukes and probably biological and chemical weapons, and for all I know gas and nerve agents too.
Somehow I doubt that nukes above 5 MT would be used for strikes on cities,its actually a waste since the same results could be obtained with smaller warheads spread over a wider area.In a nuclear attack you're actually interested in the radius of complete destruction,even a 10 MT bomb would not completely destroy all the possible targets within 20 miles of Washington DC.I think in Germany there would have been several hundred strikes excluding tactical nukes,making a rough estimate pretty much the most bomb damaged place on earth if you take into account the size of the country.
Weaver, to be honest I don't see that Oz would be much safer than the UK, especially if you lived in a city, or anywhere near an ADF facility. There's nowhere on Earth that's really safe in a nuclear war.
I'd rather have the quick death of being close to GZ than maybe living in a remote community that might slowly die once modern amenities are taken away. I lived through the '80s and to be honest the threat never really bothered me.
I think that human self interest and self preservation being what they are if there is at all a way not to blow up the world we'll find it.
I'd rather have the quick death of being close to GZ than maybe living in a remote community that might slowly die once modern amenities are taken away. I lived through the '80s and to be honest the threat never really bothered me.
I think that human self interest and self preservation being what they are if there is at all a way not to blow up the world we'll find it.
Perhaps deep in the Amazon or the Australian outback, and lets be honest, if you can survive there you can survive anywhere.
Absolutely. I think it's why most of the Cold War crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Able Archer didn't turn "hot" ultimately. You know, people will do their utmost to avoid that kind of thing if possible.
Having said that, I think this TL does a good job of painting a realistic as opposed to best case/worst case, version of what would happen in the even of that sense of self-preservation failing.
I also agree that I personally would probably prefer in such a scenario to be close enough to an initiation not to suffer. I don't think I'm cut out for surviving in the sort of world Macragge describes here...
Well I'm dependent on some medicines for my health, so I wouldn't last long anyway.
I think what happened in most CW crisis was that leaders on both sides decided that potential humiliation was better than being blasted to a million pieces.
I think what happened in most CW crisis was that leaders on both sides decided that potential humiliation was better than being blasted to a million pieces.
Hi JN1,
We actually live in quite a remote community of 5,000 in Northern NSW, with a very rich agricultural economy. The nearest concievable target is Amberley AFB and that's 300 kilometers away. That isn't deliberate BTW, just the way things worked out.
For 20 years we lived in Cairns, North Queensland, where US bombers and other air assets regularly passed through...US and RN ships too, were regular visitors. I worked at the International Airport and think it would have been hit, just like Darwin. We thought we'd have enough notice to get out of Dodge, at the beginning of the Exchange. Cairns was unlikely to be hit in the first hours, more probably in clean-up strikes a few days later.
Nowadays I too am dependent on meds for quality of life, though pretty good at 65, so a Big War now would probably be the end of me, but my kids and grandkids are all over Oz, and they were the object of the excercise.
BTW the largest US warhead was 9MT, carried on the TitanII ICBM, and largest Soviet was 25MT carried on the SS18.
We actually live in quite a remote community of 5,000 in Northern NSW, with a very rich agricultural economy. The nearest concievable target is Amberley AFB and that's 300 kilometers away. That isn't deliberate BTW, just the way things worked out.
For 20 years we lived in Cairns, North Queensland, where US bombers and other air assets regularly passed through...US and RN ships too, were regular visitors. I worked at the International Airport and think it would have been hit, just like Darwin. We thought we'd have enough notice to get out of Dodge, at the beginning of the Exchange. Cairns was unlikely to be hit in the first hours, more probably in clean-up strikes a few days later.
Nowadays I too am dependent on meds for quality of life, though pretty good at 65, so a Big War now would probably be the end of me, but my kids and grandkids are all over Oz, and they were the object of the excercise.
BTW the largest US warhead was 9MT, carried on the TitanII ICBM, and largest Soviet was 25MT carried on the SS18.
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Well I'm dependent on some medicines for my health, so I wouldn't last long anyway.
I think what happened in most CW crisis was that leaders on both sides decided that potential humiliation was better than being blasted to a million pieces.
Same here, I have about between 2 to 8 weeks supply of drugs at any one time after that, in a nuke environment I may as well shoot myself quickly.
However, I live in a suburb of a major city, so it's really just a choice between Crispy and going say to New Street and ensuring Extra Crispy.
Oddly enough, I didn't worry about it when I was younger, I left that to the bedwetters in CND.
I wonder what kind of coverage would be on any remaining tv networks following the war.The countries which would not be hit would probably still have functioning tv and radio stations.Probably round the clock coverage of the situation and desperately trying to avoid mass panic.Somewhat scary to imagine a brazilian tv presenter reading a communique saying that hundreds of millions are feared dead.Although Brazil would be a mess surely the southern part of the country.Following the strike on Buenos Aires panic and looting would have pretty much taken over Uruguay and most of Southern Brazil.
I very much rely on Macragge here to have fully researched everything available, but what I remember from articles about leaked documents, a few dozen nukes for West Germany seem to have already been scheduled for a Warsaw Pact invasion... I guess that a lot more would have come round in case of a general exchange.
Well, then the tactical strikes, the probable use of chemical and biological weapons. Yes, I also get to the terrifying count of a few hundred nukes at least. We easily get to a point where you have a ground zero per 1000km².
Add to the mayhem the factor of surviving armed forces, cut of from their logistics, their command structure, probably knowing there is no home to go back to. What they (including Bundeswehr or NVA-units) do to whatever Civilians survived will, I am afraid, remind of the latter stages of the 30-years-war.
Interestingly, since I happened to be reading this thread at the time, the song Block Buster! by The Sweet just came on the radio. This is interesting because the song opens with an air raid siren and it made me jump.
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Not surprising...........welcome to the forums, btw.
If there's even an Omaha to be downwind of after that...........
They were probably aimed directly at Cheyenne Mountain, but yeah, Colo. Springs would've been gone after that. They were just too close to survive.
Well.......the Russians couldn't always spare smaller warheads, especially given their being aimed at U.S. missile silos. In fact, if you took a 25 MT bomb and dropped it on any place, even a more widespread metropolitan area like around New York or the Dallas/Fort Worth Metro, the devastation{at least to ordinary houses}would be near total for at least 25, perhaps up to 30 miles or slightly more{in the case of the latter, even though it was pretty sprawled out even in '84, a 25 MT centered on D/FW Int'l Airport would've been enough to sufficiently trash, or even annihilate, just about every town in the middle of North Texas from Sachse to Flower Mound and from Hillsboro to McKinney and back again.
}. Of course, I know it didn't quite turn out this way here, but I thought I might share my thoughts on that subject.With that said, does anybody have any data on blast yields for N. American devices yet?
One thing which might turn out to be a problem among others is represented by any surviving nuclear armed forces outside official control.Some soviet and american subs with missiles probably still exist also a few army units with active nukes certainly survived here and there,without any government left to answer to who knows what they might do.Some would probably just abandon their weapons and search for food but others might decide to impose themselves on any surviving communities left.An american unit commander in former Germany would be pretty sure his country is no longer,so might as well make the most of it.If he happens to have operational nukes I doubt any traumatised german civilians would cause difficulties.
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Three cheers for Macragge!
Looking forward to it eagerly (There really should be an emoticon for 'Drools')
Falkenburg
Looking forward to it eagerly (There really should be an emoticon for 'Drools')
Falkenburg
That assumes that the Soviets would be willing to waste nuclear weapons on targets which are, in reality quite insignificant to them. In reality, Australia throughout the Cold War had about four or five targets which were worth a nuclear warhead - Nurrangar, NW Cape, Pine Gap, HMAS Harman and Cockatoo Island. Only the last two were close to any large cities. Of the five, the most immediate concern would be for the Warning (Nurrangar) and Command and Control facilities (NW Cape, HMAS Harman) and then for the SIGINT (Pine Gap) and finally fleet facilities (Cockatoo Island).
This I got from Des Ball himself during seminars in my Nuclear Strategy Masters course. As he was working at the time for the Pentagon on nuclear targeting, I rather suspect he knew what he was talking about. The Soviet's simply wouldn't waste nukes on minor targets.
Smaller warheads spread across a wider area does indeed deliver greater blast/firestorm damage, provided that they are accurately delivered and with the advent of reliable and accurate delivery systems by the US, became the US approach to urban targets, which is why the US moved away from massive warheads as technology developed.