Threads-for real.

I watched Threads yesterday,IMAO the most terrifying movie ever made.
I mean,it scared the crap outta me.
Especially the ending scene.
Anyway,what really would have happened if that scenario was real?
I think that the 25 degree Celsius drop in temperature was a bit too much.
And in Britain the population falling to medieval levels,even though it was hit by a tiny fraction of all the warheads,is a bit pessimistic.
Also,that "stunted generation" thing with no speech whatsoever strikes me as odd,because how would people live (not to mention rebuild) without speech?
Any thoughts?
 
Another dead thread.May it rest in peace.For anyone who wants to know,threads is a 1984 movie where the U.S and Soviet Union start nuking each other,and around 200 megatons fall on Britain.Nuclear winter ensues.
The population goes down to medieval levels,et cetera.
 
Fireaxe, as grim as threads was, it was also a very optimistic story -- humanity survives. IIRC, 200MT was the largest possible amount of damage Britain could suffer and still have any living population. That was the basis for the story. I may be wrong, but that's what I've heard, in any event.

Without doing the math, I imagine that the temperature drop is accurate. With airburst weapons -- the method of choice for city strikes -- you don't create as much fallout, but heat and blast are greatly increased. That causes firestorms, which send all sorts of lovely soot and dust into the atmosphere. One, two, or even a few dozen city-wide firestorms wouldn't be enough to affect climate globally, but when you've got thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands -- it starts to add up.

There was a study done in the last year or two on the exact amount of dust and soot that would be thrown up by a nuclear detonation -- the link to it is somewhere in the Cuban Missile War thread here on the boards. Search for it if you're interested.
 
I watched Threads yesterday,IMAO the most terrifying movie ever made.
I mean,it scared the crap outta me.
Especially the ending scene.
Anyway,what really would have happened if that scenario was real?
I think that the 25 degree Celsius drop in temperature was a bit too much.
And in Britain the population falling to medieval levels,even though it was hit by a tiny fraction of all the warheads,is a bit pessimistic.
Also,that "stunted generation" thing with no speech whatsoever strikes me as odd,because how would people live (not to mention rebuild) without speech?
Any thoughts?

I've got it on dvd. WHenever I feel ill-disposed towards Sheffield I watch it.
 
Oh,Amerigo-I loved your Cuban missile war TL.I wish I could write stories like that.You could publish that!
 
Fireaxe, as grim as threads was, it was also a very optimistic story -- humanity survives. IIRC, 200MT was the largest possible amount of damage Britain could suffer and still have any living population. That was the basis for the story. I may be wrong, but that's what I've heard, in any event.

Without doubt the fate of UK in a total nuclear conflict would have been very grim indeed, but numbers quoted are just wrong. By 1980's Soviets would not have sen 200Mt:s of nuclear firepower towards UK. Megatonnage, reliability and accuracy of Soviet missiles was always overestimated by the West.

Those interested in grim scenarios on UK should also consult the "Doomsday book"

http://urchin.earth.li/cgi-bin/twic/wiki/view.pl?page=DoomsdayBritainAfterNuclearAttack

The problem with this book, as with many others during 1980's, is that the scenarios and estimated damage is ludicruous due to tendency to greatly exagerrate the amount of damage (for example, Britain is considered to be totally flat). I don't know why, as a realistic nuclear war would have been horrible enough.
 
Without doubt the fate of UK in a total nuclear conflict would have been very grim indeed, but numbers quoted are just wrong. By 1980's Soviets would not have sen 200Mt:s of nuclear firepower towards UK. Megatonnage, reliability and accuracy of Soviet missiles was always overestimated by the West.

I'm sorry? I agree with the third sentence, but the first two are completely off base. Check out the NRDC data for Soviet force loadings in the 1980s: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab2.asp Note that this isn't nuclear warheads available -- it's nuclear delivery vehicles, which has always been the limiting factor in a nuclear war. Folks who like to say that the USSR/USA could "blow up the world X times over" tend to gloss over the fact that nuclear weapons don't do you any good without a way to throw them at the enemy.

But even these numbers are astronomical. In 1983 and 1984, when Threads was produced and aired, the Soviet Union had approximately 2,500 nuclear launch vehicles -- land, sea, and air. This number is somewhat misleading, however, as it counts missiles with multiple warheads -- MIRVs -- the same as missiles with single warheads. The best example of this is the SS-18, which was deployed to carry up to 10 warheads of 800kt or a single 20Mt warhead.

It would take just 10 20Mt-configured SS-18s to reach Britain's 200Mt limit -- In OTL, the Soviet Union deployed more than 250 of these missiles.

But that's an extreme case. Let's use the standard configuration of the older version of the SS-18: 10 550kt warheads. That would mean each missile carries 5.5Mt of explosive power. It would take just under 40 SS-18s to break Britain's 200Mt limit. That's less than a sixth of one type of missile. You've still got the bombers, sub-launched missiles, artillery-fired weapons, tactical- and theater-level weapons, and the other missile versions that I haven't even mentioned.

So yes, the Soviet Union did have more than enough nuclear firepower to make Threads a reality.
 
But would they have used that much on the UK, wasn't US their top priority.

There was more than sufficient to do both - and it you've already gone beyond MAD then why limit oneself? You seek to obliterate the opposition.

The UK was an especially important military part of NATO, with its own nuclear weapons, as well as acting as host to loads of US stuff (far more so in time of war).
 
So yes, the Soviet Union did have more than enough nuclear firepower to make Threads a reality.

Sure, in theory, but not so much in practice. First off, there were just 56 SS-18's with massive 18-25Mt warheads, which were incidentally replaced by 1984 with Mod 4 with 10 550kT warheads. Second, ICBM's except dual use SS-11's / UR-100 were earmarked for missions against America, to be more specific, mostly against silos in Midwest (Grain silos?). UR-100K and U, 420 deployed during timeframe, had 1.2Mt warheads (unitary variant) or three .330 Mt MRV's. These were not only for theater but also for strategic missions.

For theater assets, by timeframe Soviets had about 400 SS-20 with 3x0.15 Mt warheads and some number of vulnerable, unreliable and obsolete SS-4's which were already being phased out.

UK wasn't the only, and perhaps not even the most important target in Western Europe. Considering unreliable missiles, inevitable losses due to Western action and megatonnage consistently lower in Soviet primary sources compared to Western estimates the Threads Mt figure is an overkill.

Unfortunately I don't have my copy of Russian Strategic Forces at hand, which features Soviet sources for CEP, megatonnage, deployment etc. and have to rely on FAS which relies heavily upon the said book.
 
Do you have an Amazon.com link for this book? Sounds as if it's something I need to get.

Your point about how many weapons would be destroyed is a good one, but would have to depend on how much warning each side was given and the buildup to the actual missile-launch portion of the war. It's my opinion that by the 1980s, both sides have developed early-warning systems to the point that a nuclear war would involve both sides' arsenals being fired off before any sort of counterforce would be effective. Your opinion may vary.

Failure rates are another good point, but in my research for the Cuban Missile War, I found that the failure rate of the R-16 (SS-7) was just under 20 percent. That's quite high, but remember -- this was a first-generation missile. The SS-18 was two generations beyond that and had maybe a 3 percent failure rate. That's not going to be enough to cut down on the number of missiles to a great extent.

The silos you're talking about are American missile silos, and I can buy that Soviet ICBM strategy might have been partially based on counterforce. But remember, the figures I quoted the first time around are for one-sixth (16.5%) of the deployment of just one type of missile. There's still more than enough to go around. I also noticed that you didn't mention bomber strikes, which would account for a few hundred more Megaton-scale detonations. They're less effective than ICBMs, to be sure -- but once the bombs start going off, any idea of air defense is greatly reduced. And the UK is within range of even short-range Soviet bombers and missiles.

You're correct about the SS-20, but many also featured a single 1.1Mt warhead that would have been used on cities or hardened targets.

But if you don't like either of those options, there's still the SS-19 (360 launchers, 550kt warhead), SS-13 (60 launchers, 600kt warhead), or the sentimental favorite, the SS-17 (270 launchers, 1 3.4Mt or 4 400kt warheads), which was used in the Third World War to destroy Birmingham.
 
Do you have an Amazon.com link for this book? Sounds as if it's something I need to get.

http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Strat...=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214801060&sr=8-8

As criticism says, it's not exactly masterful literary piece, but solid gold in realm of information. I would highly recommend it.

Your point about how many weapons would be destroyed is a good one, but would have to depend on how much warning each side was given and the buildup to the actual missile-launch portion of the war. It's my opinion that by the 1980s, both sides have developed early-warning systems to the point that a nuclear war would involve both sides' arsenals being fired off before any sort of counterforce would be effective. Your opinion may vary.

Considering how much time, despite all the talk about network centric warfare, it has taken to struck targets from initial observation to results, during Iraq War with 500lb bombs I have some doubts about system releasing globally thousands of missiles within minutes, especially as control was strict on nuclear forces and many communications links would have been struck. In any military operation foul-ups will occur.

Another point is, that if you fire everything off one losts the capability to inflict changes into situation. Every military commander from platoon leader upwards is taught that there always has to be reserve, otherwise one cannot impact the situation. Whether the reserve consists of you and your assistant platoon leader and maybe a MG snatched from one of the squads or a contingent of mobile ICBM's is of course dependant of the level one is acting in. Also one has to consider that a one off gigantic firing hasn't been ever done. Fractricide etc. all were untried elements.

The silos you're talking about are American missile silos, and I can buy that Soviet ICBM strategy might have been partially based on counterforce. But remember, the figures I quoted the first time around are for one-sixth (16.5%) of the deployment of just one type of missile. There's still more than enough to go around.

During 1980's the US had roughly 1054 missile silos (1000 Minutemen, 54 Titans) and a quite a lot of SAC bases, dispersal bases, nuclear sub bases etc. which would have required counterforce targeting. Most of these targets would have to be struck by Soviet ICBM force, (SAC bases might have been targets for Yankee subs) which by 1984 had a total of some 1400 missiles, 420 of which were double hatted SS-11's.

Norman Friedman says that Russian officers he had talked to said that a primary portion of ICBM force was dedicated to counterforce. This would continue to general Soviet trend of pursuing defensive against strategic weapons, which was displayed by massive ground based IADS, naval forces designed both for protection of own SSBN's as well as destruction of Western SSBN's and CVBG's.

Unfortunately, as because of demands of stupid secrecy actual strike plans from 1980's are kept secret this all is a quesswork.
 
Considering how much time, despite all the talk about network centric warfare, it has taken to struck targets from initial observation to results, during Iraq War with 500lb bombs I have some doubts about system releasing globally thousands of missiles within minutes, especially as control was strict on nuclear forces and many communications links would have been struck. In any military operation foul-ups will occur.

Indeed we will. But any strikes on communications will be on the periphery -- in any wartime scenario with a prolonged conventional component, there is going to be much demand for strikes on the opponent's conventional forces, and not much left over for strategic strikes. Furthermore, any strikes on the hardened communications apparatus (of either side, by either side) would have to traverse the full weight of the opponent's best air defenses, and would have to strike the most hardened communications relays in the opponent's inventory. Furthermore, there are backup, alternate, and tertiary communications procedures for anything as critical as nuclear weapons. If, by some chance, NATO or the WP were willing to suffer the casualties needed to penetrate the opponent's homeland air defense, they cannot knock out all or even a majority of the communications links.

Another point is, that if you fire everything off one losts the capability to inflict changes into situation. Every military commander from platoon leader upwards is taught that there always has to be reserve, otherwise one cannot impact the situation. Whether the reserve consists of you and your assistant platoon leader and maybe a MG snatched from one of the squads or a contingent of mobile ICBM's is of course dependant of the level one is acting in. Also one has to consider that a one off gigantic firing hasn't been ever done. Fractricide etc. all were untried elements.

Indeed. I'd respectfully submit that there were enough warheads that both counterforce and retaliation missions could be tasked while still leaving a healthy reserve.

Norman Friedman says that Russian officers he had talked to said that a primary portion of ICBM force was dedicated to counterforce. This would continue to general Soviet trend of pursuing defensive against strategic weapons, which was displayed by massive ground based IADS, naval forces designed both for protection of own SSBN's as well as destruction of Western SSBN's and CVBG's.

Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that this is true. I don't believe it to be the case, but I'll go along with it for the moment to prove a point. ICBM counterforce targets will also include targets in Britain. This will open the door for bomber strikes (from the few dozen bombers that are bound to survive out of hundred) and/or SLBM strikes. Unlike the United States, which tasked some SLBMs for counterforce targets, the Soviet Union kept its SSBNs in protected havens like the White Sea, beneath the polar ice cap (i.e. the Typhoon) or in other defendable basins. This reduced their effectiveness at counterforce strikes, but they will still be available to strike at cities in Britain and around the world.

Unfortunately, as because of demands of stupid secrecy actual strike plans from 1980's are kept secret this all is a quesswork.

Completely agree.
 
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