The Strategy of Thermonuclear War

The Graph is from a wikipedia article. I'll try to find more specific numbers for the stuff you want. It is rather hard.

But using my 1983 scenario what would happen? The levels are much more even and it would probably be a lot closer to MAD then a Cuban Missile Crisis gone bad.

I agree with the above poster. Even in 1983 the US would probably "Win" the war but it would be very close. The only reason the US wins is because the USSR has most of its populous in one place. And that place would be turned into nuclear sludge by the end of the first couple days.
 

CalBear

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The Graph is from a wikipedia article. I'll try to find more specific numbers for the stuff you want. It is rather hard.

But using my 1983 scenario what would happen? The levels are much more even and it would probably be a lot closer to MAD then a Cuban Missile Crisis gone bad.

I agree with the above poster. Even in 1983 the US would probably "Win" the war but it would be very close. The only reason the US wins is because the USSR has most of its populous in one place. And that place would be turned into nuclear sludge by the end of the first couple days.

In 1983?

I've posted on this MANY times in the past here, so I'ii go with the short version:

No city, world wide, with a population over 100,000 survives (and most in Asia, Europe, North American, and the Middle East over 25K eat at least one weapon). The chances are 90%+ (based on every open source study I've read) that by the end of day 21 EVERY nuclear power has thrown down. There is at least a 2 in 3 chance that the Soviets, especially if they think things are going sideways, use Biological Weapons (the 1972 Convention notwithstanding, the USSR had a very active Bio program until there WASN'T a USSR anymore).

So, if 12 Americans are alive a year after the war, and only 10 Russian are still breathing, does that mean the U.S. won?

Everybody loses.
 
There's only one way to win a nuclear war--not to fight one.

Now the threat and the leverage of nuclear weapons can be useful politically, but when two parties have them--the relationship becomes a much more delicate dance.
 

Deleted member 5719

In terms of raw numbers, but in terms of raw numbers, you could claim genocide of Germans in WWII (from bombings and horny, vengeful Soviet troops) plus outright ethnic expulsions in several places.

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Or Russians. But the combined casualties of a 6 year war are different in scale to an unprovoked nuclear attack designed to destroy a country. Given the context of the post, and the use of the vern "pwn", I can only assume the poster meant a severe nuclear attack on Russia during the 50's.

This was the only time and way to "pwn" Russia, and it would have been a war crime (possibly genocide, if the attack was extensive enough, but certainly a war of aggression, and a deliberate targetting of civilians).
 
Take a look at declassified SIOP-62 documents on the net. Late '50es and start of '60es SAC had enough bombs and bombers and the intent to nuke almost every town in USSR and WarPac with population over 50,000. And they had very few nukes lower than 100kt in arsenal. Oh, they had perfectly legitimate military targets in every and each one them.

While Kennedy was more aggressive than Eisenhower, McNamara on other hand managed to get some control over SAC and trim those plans a bit.
 
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