Question about nuclear weapons + US

Hi Alt Historians,

I have a question about nuclear weapons in America. First of all, how many nuclear weapons (approx. is fine) are there in the Deep South in the early 1970s. Also, what would be the effect of sending those nuclear weapons into the Atlantic or Pacific oceans (in the middle of nowhere). I know this is quite a hard question due to ocean currents etc., but I want to know economic, international and environmental impacts (I know the last will be bad).
 
Do you mean the Deep South of the US, like Alabama and Louisianna? Do you also mean firing these nukes into the southern Pacific and Atlantic oceans?
 
Hrvatskiwi please define "Deep South" and "the effect of sending those nuclear weapons into the Atlantic" more clearly !

most ICBM Silos are in high North of USA except,
Titan II (57 unit, each with one 4 MT) in Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona
the rest are Air force Base with F-111 and B-52 Bomber spread over the south of US
but i don't have list of those bases, eider the number of Bombers station there...

you wanna drop those weapon into ocean or destroying something ?
in both of them you face massive radioactive contamination, either ocean get radioactive or by radioactive fallout...
 
Here's a list of Air Force facilities with current or former nuclear missions. It doesn't have dates, though, so I'm not sure which of these were in use in the 70s.
 
Well then a link to the page you meant would be nice! I'm going over there now to see if it includes places like Virginia and Arkansas. Or Texas for that matter.

So, Texas yes. The other two no. "Today, the Deep South is usually delineated as being those states and areas where things most often thought of as "Southern" exist in their most concentrated form."

I can see relegating Arkansas to another category but by the above cultural/perception definition I can't see how anyone could fail to include Virginia!

You see these "non-Deep South places" by Wiki geographic definition are places I happen to know had a heck of a lot of nuclear firepower stockpiled in them in the 1970s. The missile base at Little Rock for instance was the last site Titan II ICBMs were based at, until the mid-80s in fact. As for Virginia--well, you can't toss a rock in parts of Virginia without setting off the security alarms of at least two, often three, services' base perimeter alarms at once.

Norfolk Naval base is I believe the biggest Naval base in the nation, and has a huge percentage of the Navy's nuclear stockpiles. Then there's Langley AFB across the water--which to my knowledge doesn't have any nukes but you never know...

OK those aren't "Deep South." By fiat anyway.

I rather think we aren't really meant to know just what nuclear weapons lived where. The ICBMs are known. But the whole point of nuclear subs is, you don't know where they are. I'm not at all sure there were any ports in the Deep South states where nuclear missiles were loaded aboard the subs. (I do know some subs were manufactured there, around Biloxi).

Tactical stuff--they definitely would want to be vague about where it was stockpiled. But I believe well into the 70s, the Air Force still relied on the Genie air-to-air missile, meant for interceptors (that is, in that era, the F-106) to stop incoming bombers with. The Genie was nuclear-tipped, the idea being that if the target dodged well enough to survive the blast without going down immediately, the neutron radiation from the bomb ought to "poison" any nuclear warheads the bomber carries.

The Air Force kept the 106 flying as its mainstay interceptor as long as the Air Defense Command existed, which was through the 1970s. Then ADCOM was folded into Tactical Air Command and the 106s were retired in the early 80s in favor of F-16s. I only mention this because I believe that as long as F-106s were operational, the Genie missiles were too, and after they retired there might or might not have been a new generation of tactical nuclear air-to-air. But in the '70s there would at least be as many low-yield tactical nukes as there were F-106s flying. Tyndall AFB in northwest Florida was the center of my Dad's USAF career and that's in the Deep South. And he was a 106 pilot. I don't know how many other interceptor bases there were or how many planes were based at each, but there's a minimum number of Deep South nukes right there.

The thing is there a whole lot of military installations in the South, even if not so many strategic strike bases. There were even more in the '70s. I guess they had enough nukes to glass a medium-sized nation but I can't say just where and what.

As to what damage would result from someone somehow bundling the lot of them up and firing them all at once into the middle of the oceans, I suppose the main thing to worry about is fallout.

And a lot of very angry US military people and disgruntled Southerners, most of whom were proud to have this deadly stuff about.
 
Well then a link to the page you meant would be nice! I'm going over there now to see if it includes places like Virginia and Arkansas. Or Texas for that matter.

So, Texas yes. The other two no. "Today, the Deep South is usually delineated as being those states and areas where things most often thought of as "Southern" exist in their most concentrated form."

I can see relegating Arkansas to another category but by the above cultural/perception definition I can't see how anyone could fail to include Virginia!

You see these "non-Deep South places" by Wiki geographic definition are places I happen to know had a heck of a lot of nuclear firepower stockpiled in them in the 1970s. The missile base at Little Rock for instance was the last site Titan II ICBMs were based at, until the mid-80s in fact. As for Virginia--well, you can't toss a rock in parts of Virginia without setting off the security alarms of at least two, often three, services' base perimeter alarms at once.
Ummm... 'cause Virginia is in the South, but not the Deep South?

Basically, "Deep South" is often restricted to the original Confederate States (SC, GA, MS, AL), possibly including LA and I suppose TX. But TN, VA, AR and MO are basically what distinguish the Deep south from the South. IMO.
 
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