Surviving Nuclear Fallout

Even if there are enough nuclear bombs to hit every population center, there's no guarantee they'll be fired. They might get destroyed before they can be deployed (easier with submarines and aircraft), never get launch orders, be held in reserve for future use (the Russians might have concerns about China, frex), or might not even be slated for use at all.

(I remember a claim once that the reason there were so many bombs was inter-service rivalry--if one branch had X number of bombs, another branch would want the same number, etc. I assume people would not be launching nukes just to launch them.)

Also population centers need more bombs for each. Even a bomb the size of the Czar Bomb would only directly destroy the very center of what we consider Metropolitan New York City. Of course that would mean a huge number of casualties, and more importantly it would create fires for many miles around that would burn for weeks, if not months, on end. But even hitting every population center say, three times, would still leave people on the outskirts that could fairly easily survive the fallout provided they had enough provisions for a week or so.
 
Houston is an obvious target, NASA or no NASA. Mostly for the oil refineries there. EDIT: And the port.

Yes, Houston is an obvious target, but as you say not because of Johnson. That has no defense value at all (what defense value is there in training astronauts how to work in space?). However, the largest port in the US, plus half the country's oil refining capacity--that is a huge target of military value. They're not really located in the city, though, so hitting them wouldn't even hurt downtown that bad, necessarily. There'd be plenty of stuff that would survive short of the Soviets deciding to carpet-nuke the whole metropolitan area, like the western suburbs.

Asyns said:
Forget about fallout, forget about nuclear winter. The entire economy is smashed. You're lucky if 10% of the industrial base survived. You're obscenely lucky if 1% of the oil refining capacity survived. That alone will kill tens of millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions, in just the US.

I doubt it would kill "hundreds of millions" of people just in the US, since the US had a population of around 200-250 million in the 1980s :p Hard to kill more people than actually exist.
 
In an all out nuclear war, how the U.S. does in the aftermath in a large part will depend on its allies and relatively untouched nations outside of the northern Hemisphere like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, and various others.
 
Yes, Houston is an obvious target, but as you say not because of Johnson. That has no defense value at all (what defense value is there in training astronauts how to work in space?). However, the largest port in the US, plus half the country's oil refining capacity--that is a huge target of military value. They're not really located in the city, though, so hitting them wouldn't even hurt downtown that bad, necessarily. There'd be plenty of stuff that would survive short of the Soviets deciding to carpet-nuke the whole metropolitan area, like the western suburbs.

Apparently, one of the reasons the Soviets developed Buran was because they thought the American space shuttle was supposed to be capable of orbital or sub-orbital bombing runs over the Soviet Union. Complete rubbish, but it seems that the Politburo bought it.

So, there's that.

As for the city size, yeah, it's huge. Honestly blew my New York-trained mind when I looked it up on Google Maps (I think I might be going down there for the LPI conference in March). One hour to drive from the northern suburbs to Clear Lake?:eek:
 
Apparently, one of the reasons the Soviets developed Buran was because they thought the American space shuttle was supposed to be capable of orbital or sub-orbital bombing runs over the Soviet Union. Complete rubbish, but it seems that the Politburo bought it.

So, there's that.

You know, I've heard that too, and it just puzzles the hell out of me. What was shuttle supposed to be able to do that an ICBM couldn't? Seriously, what was the supposed military utility here? Does anyone know?
 
You know, I've heard that too, and it just puzzles the hell out of me. What was shuttle supposed to be able to do that an ICBM couldn't? Seriously, what was the supposed military utility here? Does anyone know?

More payload? Stealth of a sort (in that the Soviets would mistake it for a civil mission until it dove into the atmosphere over their heads)?
 
You know, I've heard that too, and it just puzzles the hell out of me. What was shuttle supposed to be able to do that an ICBM couldn't? Seriously, what was the supposed military utility here? Does anyone know?

Easy.

Shuttle(s) put into orbit a couple of weeks before a planned U.S. nuclear attack.

As they go over the Soviet Union, they release nuclear weapons that immediately deorbit and target Soviet command and control centers.

Hard to detect because Soviet early warning satellites are watching U.S. ICBM bases.

And the time until the warheads released from orbit hits their targets in less than 10 minutes so the warning time is cut dramatically.
 
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