Back in the day I used to have a manual “nuclear bomb effects computer” (or maybe it was called something else.) Basically a circular slide rule type of computer. The results were sobering.Good Lord, this is going to be really, really bad. I just simulated a Castle Bravo sized nuke (15MT) going off over London, and pretty much the entire Greater London Area is toast (blast damage as far out as Chelmsford and 3rd degree burns out to St. Albans). Would they even need a second strike on London if the first one (assuming it's one of the larger Soviet bombs) is accurate?
NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein
NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.nuclearsecrecy.com
Seven Days to the River Rhine: the Third World War - a TL
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
I was thinking both sides have to concede to make some sort of neutral buffer which they are both tied into by some kind of international peacekeeping/rebuilding initiative and in which neither can station missiles (cuban missile crisis type resolution), but realistically you're right, from the perspective of both sides this couldn't happen since neither wants to be seen as enabling the other's aggressive behaviour, by their own people and also by the other side which smells weakness. Big game of chicken. Even if both sides are fighting because they want to stop a (real or imagined) first strike by the other side. The only reason to agree on such a thing would be to avoid nuclear armageddon anyway. Plus the Soviet leadership thinks they're very much winning.
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O
It's probably as much about pre-war laws than post-war ones. At the end of the day, it is illegal to deliberately target cities in their own right with any weapons, let alone nuclear ones. So the planners who draft these plans would be comitting a crime if they drafted an operational war plan to drop a bomb on downtown Leningrad for the sake of destroying Leningrad itself. So how do they ensure the destruction of Leningrad while covering their own asses? They aim one warhead at the local KGB office, one at the airport, one at the docks, and a few at the nearby power plants and any factories that happen to be in the city. Problem solved. All your targets are perfectly legitimate, but you ensure a countervalue strike at the same time.
That's exactly what the American equivalent of countervalue targetint entails.
FYI.
The SIOP and OPLAN-8010 reportedly contain a number of selected and limited strike plans, and four Major Attack Options or MAOs.
The Major Attack Options would probably look something like this:
MAO-1: Counterforce attack on Russian/Soviet nuclear forces.
MAO-2: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces.
MAO-3: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces plus political and military leadership.
MAO-4: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces plus political and military leadership, plus countervalue attack on Russian/Soviet industry.
The SIOP and OPLAN-8010 reportedly contain a number of selected and limited strike plans, and four Major Attack Options or MAOs.
The Major Attack Options would probably look something like this:
MAO-1: Counterforce attack on Russian/Soviet nuclear forces.
MAO-2: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces.
MAO-3: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces plus political and military leadership.
MAO-4: Counterforce attack on all Russian/Soviet nuclear and conventional forces plus political and military leadership, plus countervalue attack on Russian/Soviet industry.
bguy
Donor
Does that really solve the legal issue though? Even when your target is otherwise a lawful target, the Law of Armed Conflict still requires proportionality in the use of force. (i.e. the incidental loss of human life cannot be excessive to the military advantage obtained by the destruction of the lawful target.) Would the military benefits from destroying the Leningrad Airport or the Leningrad KGB Station really be proportionate to the 100,000+ civilian lives that you would be ending by using a nuclear weapon on those targets.
Possibly not, but its more justifiable than simply targeting the city in its own right. The KGB Station and the airport are just examples. At the end of the day, if Russia or the USSR was to launch a nuclear strike on American cities, there is no way the US would not respond against similar targets - the only thing different would be the wording in the targeting folders. 'Saratov Aircraft Factory'* as opposed to 'Saratov'.
*a fictional example I plucked from thin air.
Good question. Things might get even more murky when systems such as the Pershing II are considered (which reportedly had a very accurate variable yield war head..)
One might argue that if the US was going to employ nuclear weapons that perhaps the US had an obligation to use such weapons if possible (presumably while set to the lowest possible yields that were consistent with inflicting enough damage to the target..) vs other systems with potential yields that were perhaps several orders of magnitude higher.. On the other hand the Pershing had a shorter flight time which was seen by some as being destabilizing. I also recall some debate about it's ability to reach targets in the Moscow area.
I also recall a school of thought that essentially argued that lower yield and more accurate nuclear weapons were (are ?) a bad thing as they may be more likely to be used.
I seem to recall similar logic has been used recently vis a vis proposals to deploy more modern but higher yield nuclear weapons in the tactical role (one objection was they would be unlikely to be used due to their higher yield, but they were newer and perhaps better in some ways..) I suppose a lot depends on ones point of view.
Lots of rabbit holes to go down..
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On the subject of Pershing IIs, if they could reach Moscow they'd be a damn good weapon for a decapitation strike - 5kt warheads on the Defence Ministry and the Kremlin cpuld plausibly kill the Soviet leadership within a few minutes of launch, which would buy time for the Tridents and MX missiles to take out the Soviet ICBM force and bomber bases.
Not to bring current politics into this thread any more than is absolutely necessary, but that's Russia's argument against the latest model of the B-61 nuclear bomb, the B-61 Mod-12. They're dial-a-yield weapons, and the lowest setting is 0.3 kilotons. Those weapons were deployed to NATO facilities in Europe earlier this year IIRC: one can make assumptions about their potential targets under NATO war plans, but the Russians argue that having weapons with such a low yield dramatically lessens the threshold for nuclear use.
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It does not matter if the U.S. designated specific targets in the city because the anything within a 100 mile radius would be vaporized.
It's like saying if the Soviets attacked Little Rock AFB in Little Rock, AR, or F.E. Warren Air Force base near Cheyenne, WY, it would still count as an attack on those cities. The bomb itself would not discrimnate between the actual site and the collateral damage that comes with it.
Titan II and Peacekeepers if memory serves. There were also Tridents aboard SSBNs such as the USS Ohio and the USS Michigan which were deployed to the Western Pacific at that time.
Yes, that is why the Pershing IIs being deployed to West Germany terrified the Soviets. It could reach Moscow between 10-15 minutes from launch.
As per B-61s, here's the total number of B-61 nuclear weapons in Europe as of 2019 (data published in 2022):
I'm really divided. After first nuclear usage timeline is ok. Couple of years back you could make some arguments. Now, after we have seen how Soviet gear and doctrine perform in a almost peer conflict?
Soviet conventional successes in first day of war are ridiculous. While current Russian forces are much worse than what USSR had, talking about quality not quantity, in 1983 NATO would already have a significant technological edge and insurmountable training and logistics edge.
While there are too many ATL that are simple NATO stomp until WarPac starts throwing tac nukes like candy, everything mid '80es and onward would be giving NATO the edge.
Meaning that initial air skirmishes would devastate VVS and at minimum NATO will have air dominance over its own territory. AKA Soviet ground forces on advance would be exposed to constant strikes. F-117 is already flying, giving a conventional option to strike C3 and logistics hubs on Pact territory. Soviets can get a 100-150km from their rail hubs and stall.
Have a war in late '60es or early '70es before economic rot has destroyed Soviet economy and dedovschina has destroyed Red Army... Maybe Soviets do have enough advantage to force NATO to be first to use tac nukes.
Soviet conventional successes in first day of war are ridiculous. While current Russian forces are much worse than what USSR had, talking about quality not quantity, in 1983 NATO would already have a significant technological edge and insurmountable training and logistics edge.
While there are too many ATL that are simple NATO stomp until WarPac starts throwing tac nukes like candy, everything mid '80es and onward would be giving NATO the edge.
Meaning that initial air skirmishes would devastate VVS and at minimum NATO will have air dominance over its own territory. AKA Soviet ground forces on advance would be exposed to constant strikes. F-117 is already flying, giving a conventional option to strike C3 and logistics hubs on Pact territory. Soviets can get a 100-150km from their rail hubs and stall.
Have a war in late '60es or early '70es before economic rot has destroyed Soviet economy and dedovschina has destroyed Red Army... Maybe Soviets do have enough advantage to force NATO to be first to use tac nukes.
1983 NATO does have a technological edge, the biggest problem is its limited. If the Soviets can concentrate enough IADS and CAP into a certain areas, just sheer mass (as per doctrine) can and will force any attempt to halt or counterattack said force into attritional warfare.
If the primary contributors of the war is an Ocean away and everybody would need 3 months to train its reservists to feed into a grinder, the war could be decided by then. Even if the entire 1st Echelon gets destroyed and the 2nd echelon gets mauled, the 3rd will exploit any opening and flood the rear lines with T55s and BMP1s.
Dongfeng (missile) - Wikipedia
The PLA Second Artillery Corps also has the DF-5 which they could use to target Moscow. The DF-5 has the range to hit both the European side of the USSR and the Western United States.They were a thing by 1983, so the PRC could flatten the major cities of Siberia if they could get the missiles out of their silos in time.Dongfeng (missile) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
DF-5 missile test in the South Pacific, May 1980:
CHINESE TEST SUCCESS Naval ships see missile re-entry - The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995) - 19 May 1980
Two Australian warships were among a large fleet of vessels which observed the final phase of China's intercontinental ballistic missile test in the South ...
trove.nla.gov.au
China's Ballistic Missile Program
Page 20 (Browser Page 16) mentions:
Since in 1983, China and the U.S. had good relations, I'd like to assume the DF-5s would have been targeted towards Moscow.
Chapter IX: Doomsday, November 15th 1983.
And so the war ends...
From the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, next to the city of Colorado Springs, Reagan finally issued the order to activate the Emergency Broadcast System for the first time since it had come online in 1963. This was relayed via the White House Communications Agency duty officer to Aerospace Defence Command. It became active at 02:45 PM that Monday afternoon in the Mountain Time Zone in which the state of Colorado was located (04:45 PM Eastern Standard Time) and by then doomsday was less than four hours away. Radio and television networks, the Associated Press and United Press International received and authenticated an Emergency Action Notification (EAN). Independent networks like ABC, CBS and NBC were linked into a single national network from which even independent stations would receive programming. The EBS thusly gave the President an expeditious method of communicating with the American public in the event of war, threat of war, or grave national crisis.
Through the Emergency Broadcast System Reagan addressed the American people through all available radio and TV networks in the entire country. The possibility of pending nuclear strikes on American soil was explicitly mentioned and people were urgently advised to seek shelter underground in nearby nuclear fallout shelters or, if these were not available, in cellars and subway stations. Similar warnings were issued in Europe. In both cases the responses of the civilian population were not what had been hoped for: sheer panic and a disregard for the advice to seek shelter, like had been seen earlier in West Germany. People engaged in looting on a massive scale and tried to leave the major cities in droves, resulting in gigantic traffic congestions. Law and order broke down in many places, resulting in chaos. But there were other scenes too, such as people joining each other in prayer or staying in their basements with stockpiled food and bottled water.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was readied, operating out of Mount Weather Emergency Operations Centre in Virginia. Usually a state’s gubernatorial declaration that a state emergency was overwhelming local and state authorities was required, but not if federal assets were affected. It was of course expected that this would indeed occur, so FEMA was ordered to be ready to coordinate the response, as had been intended at its inception, to the pending disaster that seemed to become likelier by the minute. The agency’s capabilities, however, were nowhere near ready for a post-apocalyptic scenario because a nuclear war had always been seen as a purely theoretical possibility. It had always been expected that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction would result in cooler heads prevailing, but it didn’t. Even if they had considered it likely, preparing for this onslaught was probably impossible anyway.
At this point the Looking Glass mission had been expanded: in peacetime only one Boeing EC-135 was airborne every 24 hours, but in wartime all eleven were in the air to serve as flying command posts for Strategic Air Command. They enabled SAC to command, control and communicate with the nuclear forces of the United States under any conditions and provided a continuous airborne alert. They could also act as Airborne Launch Control Centres, providing a survivable launch capability for the United States Air Force’s LGM-30 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force by utilizing the Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) on board that was operated by an airborne missileer crew. These flying command posts flew from Offut Air Force Base (Nebraska), Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana), Grissom Air Force Base (Indiana), Ellsworth Air Force Base (South Dakota) and Westover Air Force Base (Massachusetts). They were the eyes and ears of Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) USAF General Charles A. Gabriel.
At 06:10 PM Colorado time, still Monday November 14th in the United States, the first warnings came in. Clear Air Force Station in Alaska picked up Soviet bombers and intermediate range ballistic missiles launched from Anadyr, just across the Bering Strait on radar and warned SAC. Clear was taken out by Soviet missile strikes, but another BMEWS site (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland stayed online and also flashed a warning to SAC one minute later. A few minutes before they would hit their targets, the hundreds of ICBMs the Soviets had launched became visible in the evening sky as streaks that resembled meteors. The missiles arrived between 06:30 and 06:40 PM Mountain Time Zone (between 08:30 and 08:40 PM Eastern Standard Time).
The Soviet attack also included submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The Soviet Navy had six classes of ballistic missile submarines in service by 1983: Zulu-class, Golf-class, Hotel-class, Yankee-class, Delta-class and Typhoon-class. The latest showpiece of the Soviet Navy’s ballistic missile submarine force was the Typhoon-class, only one of which was in service at the time. The TK-208 was a 175 metre long vessel which had a surface displacement of 24.500 tonnes surfaced and 48.000 tonnes submerged, making her heavier than some of the WW I battlecruisers that had fought at Jutland in 1916. This was the largest submarine ever built and she could go for 120+ days before having to return to port for supplies. Her nuclear armament consisted of twenty R-39 missiles with ten 200 kiloton warheads each, and all those missiles were unleashed against targets in the US. Other submarines had been sunk by US Navy Los Angeles-class and Sturgeon-class attack submarines just like Sierra-class and Victor-class had sunk American SSBNs, but the quiet running TK-208 had come through and was positioned 300 km east of New York in the Atlantic. Her sublime quietness under water was attributed to her unique triple layered hull.
By the time the Soviet missiles arrived Reagan had already authorized the counterstrike, thereby issuing the order he had always hoped he’d never have to give. He had no choice because the incoming Soviet strike targeted American bomber bases and fields of Minuteman missile silos, leaving the US no means of retaliation if it didn’t also launch. It was a terrible conundrum for Reagan: if he did nothing then hundreds of millions of Soviet lives would be spared, but then the United States would be destroyed and left defenceless against a triumphant USSR. If he did launch, Soviet domination would be prevented but at a terrible human cost. He assuaged his conscience by telling himself the Soviets had wanted this outcome, not him.
In the meantime, the Minuteman missiles would arrive at their destination in the USSR in half an hour, a few minutes after the Soviet missiles had arrived on US soil. Meanwhile, the Ohio-class and Benjamin Franklin-class submarines were all out at sea and those that hadn’t been sunk by Soviet attack submarines launched their missiles too (the exceptions were USS Kamehameha, USS George Bancroft and USS Henry L. Stimson, so a second strike capability would remain if need be). The Ohio-class ships launched twenty Trident II missiles with twelve MIRVed W76 100 kiloton warheads each and all but three Benjamin Franklin-class boats launched sixteen of these too (MIRV stood for Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles). The B-52 fleet consisting of 290 bombers also finally sprang into action, after loitering in holding patterns and refuelling in mid-air for days within striking distance of the Eastern Bloc.
Because the Soviet strike also targeted installations in Western Europe, the British and French nuclear arsenals also came into play early that Tuesday morning November 15th. The BMEWS site at RAF Fylingdales, for example, picked up the launch of a swarm of medium range and intermediate range ballistic missiles (such as the R-12 Dvina, also known under the NATO reporting name SS-4 Sandal, equipped with a warhead with a yield between 1 and 2.3 megatons) launched from Eastern Europe at 02:05 AM Tuesday morning Western European time. A number of these would reach targets in Britain such as RAF Fylingdales, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall and countless other military bases, industrial installations, infrastructural targets and cities within ten minutes. This prompted Prime Minister Thatcher to authorize an immediate retaliatory counterstrike. Avro Vulcan bombers lumbered off in the direction of Eastern Europe. The four Resolution-class submarines launched sixteen Polaris A-3 missiles each, which were all equipped with three 200 kiloton warheads. The four French Redoutable-class submarines launched sixteen M20 missiles, each one carrying a single 1.2 megaton warhead. The British and French of course also launched the ICBMs they had at their disposal.
The NATO counterstrike against the Warsaw Pact was just as terrible as the Soviet first strike against them. Soviet and Warsaw Pact air defences shot down about a quarter of the US Air Force’s B-52s, but most of them got through and reached their targets, after which they returned to base in order to load more bombs aboard to eliminate even more targets. They carried B61 bombs set at the maximum yield of 340 kilotons, some of the new and untested B83s with a non-variable yield of 1.2 megatons and even some older B53s capable of 9 megatons. Well over one thousand warheads in the 100 kiloton to 1.2 megaton range were delivered by Western nuclear missiles, annihilating most military, political, economic, infrastructural, demographic and cultural targets in the Warsaw Pact. Hardest hit was the Soviet Union itself. Two hours into the operation remaining B-52s managed to proceed to their targets unimpeded as there wasn’t anybody left who could return fire because they were either dead or had abandoned their posts. At some point, however, these same B-52s returned home to find their bases glassed and their country devastated of course, leaving them no place to land.
Meanwhile, out of a Soviet population of roughly 270 million people, about 155 million people had been killed in this nuclear exchange which had lasted for about two hours. Little was left standing, not even Moscow which was defended by the anti-ballistic missiles the country was allowed under the ABM Treaty. American MIRVed ICMBs had eventually overwhelmed these defences. Russia was instantaneously reduced to late nineteenth century population levels, and the horror wouldn’t end there.
The damage to the United States was equally horrific and a comprehensive list of destroyed cities, towns and military installation is too long to give, but a selection shows what the Soviet considerations behind their target choices were. Washington DC was chosen as the political target and was annihilated with nine surface bursts in the 800 kiloton to 1 megaton range, reducing the White House, the Capitol Building and the Pentagon to rubble. New York City, the home of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, was the symbol of American capitalism and an economic target. Three 1 megaton air bursts destroyed the city while JFK International Airport and LaGuardia were taken out by two 200 kiloton surface bursts each.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the most populous cities of the country, was hit by a missile to destroy the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and the city’s naval base. Charleston, South Carolina, a major submarine base and home to the Charleston Navy Yard, was selected for similar reasons. The same applied to Norfolk, Virginia, the main base of most of the Atlantic Fleet, which was hit by two missiles. Nearly 90% of all cars in the US at the time were produced domestically, the vast majority of them in Detroit, Michigan, reason enough to target it with three 1 megaton air bursts. The Detroit Arsenal was consumed by a 500 kiloton surface burst and Detroit International Airport by two 200 kiloton surface bursts.
Of major naval importance on the west coast was San Diego, the home of Miramar and Coronado, the respective training sites of US Marine Corps pilots and Navy SEALs. Bremerton, Washington, was destroyed to take out the Puget Sound Naval Yard, the largest naval shore facility of the Pacific Northwest. Alameda was the third largest naval base on the west coast and was destroyed, taking with it the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Oakland Army Base and much of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco. The iconic Golden Gate Bridge was ruined: the suspension cables were cut, causing the roadway to fall into the bay along with all the cars on it filled with people trying to escape. Only the bridge’s two towers remained. Nearby Los Angeles was hit with a single 1 megaton warhead. The westernmost missiles strike to land on US soil hit Honolulu, Hawaii, destroying the base of the Pacific Fleet and any ships not out at sea.
Two missiles were directed toward Mount Weather Emergency Operations Centre, a site the Soviets knew played a role in the continuity of government. They thought Reagan would go here. While the underground facility survived, its ability to communicate with the outside world was cut off. The Cheyenne Mountain Complex survived ten 1 megaton strikes, but nearby Colorado Springs was not so lucky. Offut Air Force Base was hit by two missiles as it was the headquarters of SAC, knocking out the base and devastating the nearby city of Omaha, Nebraska. Dozens of other missiles mostly targeted air force bases: Barksdale AFB (Bossier City, Louisiana), Ellsworth AFB (Rapid City, South Dakota), Grand Forks AFB (Grand Forks, North Dakota), Forbes AFB (Topeka, Kansas), Fairchild AFB (Spokane, Washington), Lockbourne AFB (Columbus, Ohio), Wright-Patterson AFB (Dayton, Ohio), Groton (Connecticut, the HQ of the US submarine fleet), Whiteman AFB (Knob Noster, Missouri) and Tucson (Arizona, the Air Force’s boneyard) among others.
Besides that, there was also the Soviet bomber attack. Fortunately radar coverage was still mostly up despite the ongoing nuclear strikes, which also tried to take out the Distant Early Warning Line in Canada. Fighters were vectored in to intercept the bombers and if that wasn’t possible, the Americans used Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles tipped with 20 kiloton warheads or AIR-2 Genie SAMs with 1.5 kiloton warheads. Out of 1.000 bombers, however, about a quarter made it through these very potent air defences. Their targets included Chicago (Illinois), Cleveland (Ohio), Baltimore (Maryland), Boston (Massachusetts), Seattle (Washington), Cincinnati (Ohio), Denver (Colorado), Minneapolis (Minnesota), Portland (Oregon), Flint (Michigan), Atlanta (Georgia), Fort Riley (Kansas) and Houston (Texas). In Canada, Edmonton, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver were all hit by these bombers. Fighting against more bombers, for example those targeting the BMEWS site near Thule Air Force base in Greenland, continued. One bomber eventually made it through to Thule while airbases in Alaska, such as Elmendorf, got hit by MRBMs and IRBMs launched from Siberia.
In all, some 1.300 Soviet nuclear warheads detonated over American soil and 135 million Americans died out of a pre-war population of ±233 million people, reducing the population to roughly 1910 levels. Almost all major American cities were gone and so were most military bases, industrial installations, modern communications like phone, radio, television and computers, basic amenities like housing, electricity, running water and heating, healthcare facilities like hospitals, pharmacies and drug stores, police stations and courthouses, most state and local political authorities, educational and religious facilities like schools, universities and churches, food supplies from grocery stores, petrol stations and air fuel, and gasoline or diesel powered vehicles like airplanes, trucks, cars and busses. Living standards had been reduced to a pre-industrial, medieval standard in which muscle power and domesticated working animals would be the main economic drivers again. Any semblance of law and order disappeared in large parts of the country. Chaos reigned in these regions and those who survived were often those who were willing to resort to any means, including cruelty and murder. Plenty of crimes were committed as an act of survival in the war’s immediate aftermath, many of which would never be punished.
It wasn’t any better in Europe. Great Britain, for example, had been hit by approximately 200 Soviet nuclear weapons in the 100 kiloton to 1 megaton range. Out of a population of 56 million people, 27 million had survived the onslaught, reducing the population to mid-Victorian Era levels, and part of that population would succumb to illness and famine in the years to come as the food production and distribution and healthcare sectors had both collapsed in these few hours of mayhem. Many people died of radiation sickness in the first few months after the war and cancer rates skyrocketed in the years that followed.
In France and the rest of Western Europe it was much the same: the population had been halved in a matter of a few hours and all the hallmarks of a modern post-1945 industrialized country were gone. Particularly Germany, where most of the fighting had taken place, was an immense blackened radioactive dead zone for the most part. Only Berlin remained untouched as neither side had been willing to risk hitting their own people. In the Netherlands and Belgium, which had remained loyal to NATO, The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Brussels, Antwerp, Mons and Liege were annihilated next to the targets already mentioned such as various air bases. Dutch dikes were also hit at several points, and the results were disastrous: half of the country was below sea level, primarily the northern and western parts. Hundreds of thousands drowned in the terrible floods that followed and these areas became a radioactive marsh in the years that followed with uninhabitable ruins rising up from the marshland here and there. The east and south of the Netherlands were above sea level, so were spared this massive inundation. Poland was not spared by NATO despite Wałęsa’s rebellion as much of the Soviet Army’s logistics went through Poland. Dozens of targets were hit, most of those along the Vistula River (most notably Warsaw and Krakow). A quarter of a billion people had died in mainland Europe and Turkey, not counting the USSR.
Asia and the Middle East hadn’t escaped scot-free either, with Japan constituting a Soviet target. Nine major Japanese cities had been hit by one or more megaton range hits: Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Yokosuka (the US Seventh Fleet was stationed in Yokosuka). Additionally, several other military installations had been hit in at least two dozen strikes in the lower tens to hundreds of kilotons range. Though not as ruinous as the attacks on the US and Europe, Japan was plunged into an extreme crisis with its economically most important cities destroyed and fifteen million people dead. The government chose Kyoto as its provisional capital and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces were used to enforce martial law and rein in chaos, such as looting. Emperor Hirohito had perished in the pandemonium of the Tokyo nuclear strike and his son Akihito succeeded him.
Other places in Asia and the Middle East that were hit included South Korea, the Philippines, Israel and China. The South Korean capital Seoul, the populous port city of Busan and the main base of United States Forces Korea, Camp Humphreys near the city of Pyeongtaek, were destroyed by three one megaton warheads each. In the Philippines, the capital of Manila, Cebu and US Naval Base Subic Bay were taken out along with several others. In Israel, Tel Aviv and Haifa were taken out. Dozens of targets had been hit in China, primarily in the north where their army had been guarding the long Sino-Soviet border. The first and only strike in Latin America destroyed the Panama Canal. In total, 700 million people died in the six days that World War III had lasted, most of them on the sixth day, and the misery wouldn’t end there. But at the very least the war was over. The NATO and Warsaw Pact remnants finally agreed to a ceasefire now.
Chapter IX: Doomsday, November 15th 1983.
From the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, next to the city of Colorado Springs, Reagan finally issued the order to activate the Emergency Broadcast System for the first time since it had come online in 1963. This was relayed via the White House Communications Agency duty officer to Aerospace Defence Command. It became active at 02:45 PM that Monday afternoon in the Mountain Time Zone in which the state of Colorado was located (04:45 PM Eastern Standard Time) and by then doomsday was less than four hours away. Radio and television networks, the Associated Press and United Press International received and authenticated an Emergency Action Notification (EAN). Independent networks like ABC, CBS and NBC were linked into a single national network from which even independent stations would receive programming. The EBS thusly gave the President an expeditious method of communicating with the American public in the event of war, threat of war, or grave national crisis.
Through the Emergency Broadcast System Reagan addressed the American people through all available radio and TV networks in the entire country. The possibility of pending nuclear strikes on American soil was explicitly mentioned and people were urgently advised to seek shelter underground in nearby nuclear fallout shelters or, if these were not available, in cellars and subway stations. Similar warnings were issued in Europe. In both cases the responses of the civilian population were not what had been hoped for: sheer panic and a disregard for the advice to seek shelter, like had been seen earlier in West Germany. People engaged in looting on a massive scale and tried to leave the major cities in droves, resulting in gigantic traffic congestions. Law and order broke down in many places, resulting in chaos. But there were other scenes too, such as people joining each other in prayer or staying in their basements with stockpiled food and bottled water.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was readied, operating out of Mount Weather Emergency Operations Centre in Virginia. Usually a state’s gubernatorial declaration that a state emergency was overwhelming local and state authorities was required, but not if federal assets were affected. It was of course expected that this would indeed occur, so FEMA was ordered to be ready to coordinate the response, as had been intended at its inception, to the pending disaster that seemed to become likelier by the minute. The agency’s capabilities, however, were nowhere near ready for a post-apocalyptic scenario because a nuclear war had always been seen as a purely theoretical possibility. It had always been expected that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction would result in cooler heads prevailing, but it didn’t. Even if they had considered it likely, preparing for this onslaught was probably impossible anyway.
At this point the Looking Glass mission had been expanded: in peacetime only one Boeing EC-135 was airborne every 24 hours, but in wartime all eleven were in the air to serve as flying command posts for Strategic Air Command. They enabled SAC to command, control and communicate with the nuclear forces of the United States under any conditions and provided a continuous airborne alert. They could also act as Airborne Launch Control Centres, providing a survivable launch capability for the United States Air Force’s LGM-30 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force by utilizing the Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) on board that was operated by an airborne missileer crew. These flying command posts flew from Offut Air Force Base (Nebraska), Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana), Grissom Air Force Base (Indiana), Ellsworth Air Force Base (South Dakota) and Westover Air Force Base (Massachusetts). They were the eyes and ears of Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) USAF General Charles A. Gabriel.
At 06:10 PM Colorado time, still Monday November 14th in the United States, the first warnings came in. Clear Air Force Station in Alaska picked up Soviet bombers and intermediate range ballistic missiles launched from Anadyr, just across the Bering Strait on radar and warned SAC. Clear was taken out by Soviet missile strikes, but another BMEWS site (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland stayed online and also flashed a warning to SAC one minute later. A few minutes before they would hit their targets, the hundreds of ICBMs the Soviets had launched became visible in the evening sky as streaks that resembled meteors. The missiles arrived between 06:30 and 06:40 PM Mountain Time Zone (between 08:30 and 08:40 PM Eastern Standard Time).
The Soviet attack also included submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The Soviet Navy had six classes of ballistic missile submarines in service by 1983: Zulu-class, Golf-class, Hotel-class, Yankee-class, Delta-class and Typhoon-class. The latest showpiece of the Soviet Navy’s ballistic missile submarine force was the Typhoon-class, only one of which was in service at the time. The TK-208 was a 175 metre long vessel which had a surface displacement of 24.500 tonnes surfaced and 48.000 tonnes submerged, making her heavier than some of the WW I battlecruisers that had fought at Jutland in 1916. This was the largest submarine ever built and she could go for 120+ days before having to return to port for supplies. Her nuclear armament consisted of twenty R-39 missiles with ten 200 kiloton warheads each, and all those missiles were unleashed against targets in the US. Other submarines had been sunk by US Navy Los Angeles-class and Sturgeon-class attack submarines just like Sierra-class and Victor-class had sunk American SSBNs, but the quiet running TK-208 had come through and was positioned 300 km east of New York in the Atlantic. Her sublime quietness under water was attributed to her unique triple layered hull.
By the time the Soviet missiles arrived Reagan had already authorized the counterstrike, thereby issuing the order he had always hoped he’d never have to give. He had no choice because the incoming Soviet strike targeted American bomber bases and fields of Minuteman missile silos, leaving the US no means of retaliation if it didn’t also launch. It was a terrible conundrum for Reagan: if he did nothing then hundreds of millions of Soviet lives would be spared, but then the United States would be destroyed and left defenceless against a triumphant USSR. If he did launch, Soviet domination would be prevented but at a terrible human cost. He assuaged his conscience by telling himself the Soviets had wanted this outcome, not him.
In the meantime, the Minuteman missiles would arrive at their destination in the USSR in half an hour, a few minutes after the Soviet missiles had arrived on US soil. Meanwhile, the Ohio-class and Benjamin Franklin-class submarines were all out at sea and those that hadn’t been sunk by Soviet attack submarines launched their missiles too (the exceptions were USS Kamehameha, USS George Bancroft and USS Henry L. Stimson, so a second strike capability would remain if need be). The Ohio-class ships launched twenty Trident II missiles with twelve MIRVed W76 100 kiloton warheads each and all but three Benjamin Franklin-class boats launched sixteen of these too (MIRV stood for Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles). The B-52 fleet consisting of 290 bombers also finally sprang into action, after loitering in holding patterns and refuelling in mid-air for days within striking distance of the Eastern Bloc.
Because the Soviet strike also targeted installations in Western Europe, the British and French nuclear arsenals also came into play early that Tuesday morning November 15th. The BMEWS site at RAF Fylingdales, for example, picked up the launch of a swarm of medium range and intermediate range ballistic missiles (such as the R-12 Dvina, also known under the NATO reporting name SS-4 Sandal, equipped with a warhead with a yield between 1 and 2.3 megatons) launched from Eastern Europe at 02:05 AM Tuesday morning Western European time. A number of these would reach targets in Britain such as RAF Fylingdales, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall and countless other military bases, industrial installations, infrastructural targets and cities within ten minutes. This prompted Prime Minister Thatcher to authorize an immediate retaliatory counterstrike. Avro Vulcan bombers lumbered off in the direction of Eastern Europe. The four Resolution-class submarines launched sixteen Polaris A-3 missiles each, which were all equipped with three 200 kiloton warheads. The four French Redoutable-class submarines launched sixteen M20 missiles, each one carrying a single 1.2 megaton warhead. The British and French of course also launched the ICBMs they had at their disposal.
The NATO counterstrike against the Warsaw Pact was just as terrible as the Soviet first strike against them. Soviet and Warsaw Pact air defences shot down about a quarter of the US Air Force’s B-52s, but most of them got through and reached their targets, after which they returned to base in order to load more bombs aboard to eliminate even more targets. They carried B61 bombs set at the maximum yield of 340 kilotons, some of the new and untested B83s with a non-variable yield of 1.2 megatons and even some older B53s capable of 9 megatons. Well over one thousand warheads in the 100 kiloton to 1.2 megaton range were delivered by Western nuclear missiles, annihilating most military, political, economic, infrastructural, demographic and cultural targets in the Warsaw Pact. Hardest hit was the Soviet Union itself. Two hours into the operation remaining B-52s managed to proceed to their targets unimpeded as there wasn’t anybody left who could return fire because they were either dead or had abandoned their posts. At some point, however, these same B-52s returned home to find their bases glassed and their country devastated of course, leaving them no place to land.
Meanwhile, out of a Soviet population of roughly 270 million people, about 155 million people had been killed in this nuclear exchange which had lasted for about two hours. Little was left standing, not even Moscow which was defended by the anti-ballistic missiles the country was allowed under the ABM Treaty. American MIRVed ICMBs had eventually overwhelmed these defences. Russia was instantaneously reduced to late nineteenth century population levels, and the horror wouldn’t end there.
The damage to the United States was equally horrific and a comprehensive list of destroyed cities, towns and military installation is too long to give, but a selection shows what the Soviet considerations behind their target choices were. Washington DC was chosen as the political target and was annihilated with nine surface bursts in the 800 kiloton to 1 megaton range, reducing the White House, the Capitol Building and the Pentagon to rubble. New York City, the home of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, was the symbol of American capitalism and an economic target. Three 1 megaton air bursts destroyed the city while JFK International Airport and LaGuardia were taken out by two 200 kiloton surface bursts each.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the most populous cities of the country, was hit by a missile to destroy the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and the city’s naval base. Charleston, South Carolina, a major submarine base and home to the Charleston Navy Yard, was selected for similar reasons. The same applied to Norfolk, Virginia, the main base of most of the Atlantic Fleet, which was hit by two missiles. Nearly 90% of all cars in the US at the time were produced domestically, the vast majority of them in Detroit, Michigan, reason enough to target it with three 1 megaton air bursts. The Detroit Arsenal was consumed by a 500 kiloton surface burst and Detroit International Airport by two 200 kiloton surface bursts.
Of major naval importance on the west coast was San Diego, the home of Miramar and Coronado, the respective training sites of US Marine Corps pilots and Navy SEALs. Bremerton, Washington, was destroyed to take out the Puget Sound Naval Yard, the largest naval shore facility of the Pacific Northwest. Alameda was the third largest naval base on the west coast and was destroyed, taking with it the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Oakland Army Base and much of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco. The iconic Golden Gate Bridge was ruined: the suspension cables were cut, causing the roadway to fall into the bay along with all the cars on it filled with people trying to escape. Only the bridge’s two towers remained. Nearby Los Angeles was hit with a single 1 megaton warhead. The westernmost missiles strike to land on US soil hit Honolulu, Hawaii, destroying the base of the Pacific Fleet and any ships not out at sea.
Two missiles were directed toward Mount Weather Emergency Operations Centre, a site the Soviets knew played a role in the continuity of government. They thought Reagan would go here. While the underground facility survived, its ability to communicate with the outside world was cut off. The Cheyenne Mountain Complex survived ten 1 megaton strikes, but nearby Colorado Springs was not so lucky. Offut Air Force Base was hit by two missiles as it was the headquarters of SAC, knocking out the base and devastating the nearby city of Omaha, Nebraska. Dozens of other missiles mostly targeted air force bases: Barksdale AFB (Bossier City, Louisiana), Ellsworth AFB (Rapid City, South Dakota), Grand Forks AFB (Grand Forks, North Dakota), Forbes AFB (Topeka, Kansas), Fairchild AFB (Spokane, Washington), Lockbourne AFB (Columbus, Ohio), Wright-Patterson AFB (Dayton, Ohio), Groton (Connecticut, the HQ of the US submarine fleet), Whiteman AFB (Knob Noster, Missouri) and Tucson (Arizona, the Air Force’s boneyard) among others.
Besides that, there was also the Soviet bomber attack. Fortunately radar coverage was still mostly up despite the ongoing nuclear strikes, which also tried to take out the Distant Early Warning Line in Canada. Fighters were vectored in to intercept the bombers and if that wasn’t possible, the Americans used Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles tipped with 20 kiloton warheads or AIR-2 Genie SAMs with 1.5 kiloton warheads. Out of 1.000 bombers, however, about a quarter made it through these very potent air defences. Their targets included Chicago (Illinois), Cleveland (Ohio), Baltimore (Maryland), Boston (Massachusetts), Seattle (Washington), Cincinnati (Ohio), Denver (Colorado), Minneapolis (Minnesota), Portland (Oregon), Flint (Michigan), Atlanta (Georgia), Fort Riley (Kansas) and Houston (Texas). In Canada, Edmonton, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver were all hit by these bombers. Fighting against more bombers, for example those targeting the BMEWS site near Thule Air Force base in Greenland, continued. One bomber eventually made it through to Thule while airbases in Alaska, such as Elmendorf, got hit by MRBMs and IRBMs launched from Siberia.
In all, some 1.300 Soviet nuclear warheads detonated over American soil and 135 million Americans died out of a pre-war population of ±233 million people, reducing the population to roughly 1910 levels. Almost all major American cities were gone and so were most military bases, industrial installations, modern communications like phone, radio, television and computers, basic amenities like housing, electricity, running water and heating, healthcare facilities like hospitals, pharmacies and drug stores, police stations and courthouses, most state and local political authorities, educational and religious facilities like schools, universities and churches, food supplies from grocery stores, petrol stations and air fuel, and gasoline or diesel powered vehicles like airplanes, trucks, cars and busses. Living standards had been reduced to a pre-industrial, medieval standard in which muscle power and domesticated working animals would be the main economic drivers again. Any semblance of law and order disappeared in large parts of the country. Chaos reigned in these regions and those who survived were often those who were willing to resort to any means, including cruelty and murder. Plenty of crimes were committed as an act of survival in the war’s immediate aftermath, many of which would never be punished.
It wasn’t any better in Europe. Great Britain, for example, had been hit by approximately 200 Soviet nuclear weapons in the 100 kiloton to 1 megaton range. Out of a population of 56 million people, 27 million had survived the onslaught, reducing the population to mid-Victorian Era levels, and part of that population would succumb to illness and famine in the years to come as the food production and distribution and healthcare sectors had both collapsed in these few hours of mayhem. Many people died of radiation sickness in the first few months after the war and cancer rates skyrocketed in the years that followed.
In France and the rest of Western Europe it was much the same: the population had been halved in a matter of a few hours and all the hallmarks of a modern post-1945 industrialized country were gone. Particularly Germany, where most of the fighting had taken place, was an immense blackened radioactive dead zone for the most part. Only Berlin remained untouched as neither side had been willing to risk hitting their own people. In the Netherlands and Belgium, which had remained loyal to NATO, The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Brussels, Antwerp, Mons and Liege were annihilated next to the targets already mentioned such as various air bases. Dutch dikes were also hit at several points, and the results were disastrous: half of the country was below sea level, primarily the northern and western parts. Hundreds of thousands drowned in the terrible floods that followed and these areas became a radioactive marsh in the years that followed with uninhabitable ruins rising up from the marshland here and there. The east and south of the Netherlands were above sea level, so were spared this massive inundation. Poland was not spared by NATO despite Wałęsa’s rebellion as much of the Soviet Army’s logistics went through Poland. Dozens of targets were hit, most of those along the Vistula River (most notably Warsaw and Krakow). A quarter of a billion people had died in mainland Europe and Turkey, not counting the USSR.
Asia and the Middle East hadn’t escaped scot-free either, with Japan constituting a Soviet target. Nine major Japanese cities had been hit by one or more megaton range hits: Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Yokosuka (the US Seventh Fleet was stationed in Yokosuka). Additionally, several other military installations had been hit in at least two dozen strikes in the lower tens to hundreds of kilotons range. Though not as ruinous as the attacks on the US and Europe, Japan was plunged into an extreme crisis with its economically most important cities destroyed and fifteen million people dead. The government chose Kyoto as its provisional capital and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces were used to enforce martial law and rein in chaos, such as looting. Emperor Hirohito had perished in the pandemonium of the Tokyo nuclear strike and his son Akihito succeeded him.
Other places in Asia and the Middle East that were hit included South Korea, the Philippines, Israel and China. The South Korean capital Seoul, the populous port city of Busan and the main base of United States Forces Korea, Camp Humphreys near the city of Pyeongtaek, were destroyed by three one megaton warheads each. In the Philippines, the capital of Manila, Cebu and US Naval Base Subic Bay were taken out along with several others. In Israel, Tel Aviv and Haifa were taken out. Dozens of targets had been hit in China, primarily in the north where their army had been guarding the long Sino-Soviet border. The first and only strike in Latin America destroyed the Panama Canal. In total, 700 million people died in the six days that World War III had lasted, most of them on the sixth day, and the misery wouldn’t end there. But at the very least the war was over. The NATO and Warsaw Pact remnants finally agreed to a ceasefire now.
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Well, the apocalypse has come. R.I.P. to all those who died in the nuclear exchange. Looks like Australia, Brazil, South Africa and India are the new superpowers, if the latter three don't descend into anarchy.
Well, looks like I'm dead ITTL! (I was born on November 14 and I lived in Auburn, about 30 miles from Seattle)