What is a realistic ww3?

Lateknight

Banned
Before the development of SLBMs a total victory in nuclear war was theoretically possible. A surprise attack that happens at the same time i.e no delay in the destruction of the targets with anything that even looked nuclear would being hit multiple times, then bombed again the second third and fourth wave attacks would prevent any type of world ending retaliation.
 
Realistically, any armed uprisings behind the iron curtain in a hot Cuban missile crisis scenario are going to be poorly coordinated, full of informants, and easy to crush. No way will the Soviets need to waste nukes on Poland. People don't take into account the months long political shitstorm that provided the context of 1956, or the advanced state of decay that was in play in 1989.
 
And the Soviet strategy was to use everything at the start, not wait and put the ball in the US' court. Theirs was not a strategy of gradual escalation, as the US had crafted with their "flexible response" policy. It was one of total annihilation of the enemy with everything they had before the enemy could hit at all.

Actually around 1975, the Soviets began rethinking nuclear warfighting. Though their publicly stated doctrine was "no first use" and "massive retaliation", in actuality they developed the tactics and weaponry to fight both theatre and limited wars.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...zDvjHqQnDhX8agaCA&sig2=NHIh_JWQN3SbqWksSnREPg
 
More likely as a possibility in the 1980s.

A Red Storm Rising type scenario. The leadership on both sides are well aware of the dangers of escalation and are too scared to use WMD i n case it escalates into an all out holocaust.

A limited nuclear exchange involviing only a small number of weapons as in Hacket's Third World War. Following the exchange the two sides come too their senses and negotiate.

Under the above circumstances a conventional WW3 seems plausible. But there is the question of what happens in the event of a bloody battlefield stalemate after the first few months of fighting after which most of the high tech weapons have been expended. At this point one of three possibilities exist

1 A negotiated solution
2 A relative pause while both sides conscript and build up their armies to fight an extended conventional war like the previous two world wars
3 Someone tries to break the stalemat with WMD in which case the above still applies
 
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