What would survive a nuked 1960's America?

Back when I studied this in Uni the USSR in late 1962 could only hit the US with about 340 warheads, and a US first strike would get 90% of those. 2 years later I imagine the balance would be more in the USSR's favour as they deployed their 1st generation of proper ICBMs, but still overwhelmingly in the US's favour.

It depends very much on whether the war happens in the early sixties or the late sixties. The map above shows a late sixties disaster. A pre-ICBM attack might land a few dozen bombs on the US, but American bombers and mid-range missiles in Turkey would do their job on the Soviets. Even those that hit the US might land off target, so the country would be very re-buildable.

Now, let's see how the butterflies fly. No Soviet threat means no space race. No push for ICBM's and a man on the moon means the intense research needed for the IC chips that would revolutionize electronics in later decades. Without US government funding to push electronics, the world might remain frozen in late-sixties technology for a long time. No Internet, no cell phones, no world wide web and computers remain mainframe devices confined to government, large businesses and universities.
 
Now, let's see how the butterflies fly. No Soviet threat means no space race. No push for ICBM's and a man on the moon means the intense research needed for the IC chips that would revolutionize electronics in later decades. Without US government funding to push electronics, the world might remain frozen in late-sixties technology for a long time. No Internet, no cell phones, no world wide web and computers remain mainframe devices confined to government, large businesses and universities.

It's not just the lack of a Soviet threat. The US has just been devastated. Rebuildable, yes. But, unless the US gets very lucky or the war happens very early, then we've just gone through roughly what the USSR went through in WW2, maybe worse. Our resources are going to be occupied with more mundane problems for some time to come. And that's assuming the nuclear winter hypothesis is false - nuclear testing isn't really comparable, since we generally didn't test bombs in areas where there was stuff around to be burned.
 
Assuming this is an early-sixties war, we get hit with dozens, not hundreds or thousands of warheads. We can assume no nuclear winter, but maybe lower than average temperatures, much like the summer of 1981 after Mt. St. Helens erupted. Many of the transportation hubs in the major cities are destroyed, but the rural railroads are still there. Much of the heavy earthmoving and construction equipment is spread out building the new Interstate highways, and will be dedicated to rebuilding the cities for the next decade. For that matter, the Interstate system is put on hold, maybe for good, as effort is centered on the railroads. Smaller communities along the big rivers (Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri) will thrive as they become river and rail transportation hubs again.

By about 1975, the US will be back on course, a decade behind OTL. Unfortunately, the incentive for revolutionary technology will not be there.
 
Why the huge clusters in Montana and North Dakota? Is that where the silos are?

For sure, however the map fails to reflect the missile field for Grand Forks, or is this current targets? Eastern NoDak had as many silos as the western area. Third largest nuclear power in the world.

Also depending on the TL, southwestern Missouri, south of KC and north of Joplin had as many silos as the other fields. Also South Dakota had a large field of at least 150 silos. However hitting each silo in any field is a crap shoot. They knew the location of the control centers so there would really be 25-30 strikes for each field.


As for nuclear winter, the TTAPS model was flawed to extreme as they did not take into account terrain effects, using a FLAT world among other things. More like a nuclear 'autumn' than winter.
 
Also depending on the TL, southwestern Missouri, south of KC and north of Joplin had as many silos as the other fields. Also South Dakota had a large field of at least 150 silos. However hitting each silo in any field is a crap shoot. They knew the location of the control centers so there would really be 25-30 strikes for each field.

My understanding is that there are airborne backup control centers that can launch the missiles if need be. Hence the need to hit the silos themselves. Although I don't know if that was the case in the 60s.

As for nuclear winter, the TTAPS model was flawed to extreme as they did not take into account terrain effects, using a FLAT world among other things. More like a nuclear 'autumn' than winter.

There was more than one nuclear winter study. Including a flurry over the last ten years using updated climate models that find very serious cooling effects. The studies I've seen rely on an assumption that did not seem supported by the evidence - specifically, the assumption that large amounts of soot would reach the stratosphere instead of raining out - but a) I'm not a climate scientist, so maybe that actually is a reasonable assumption; and b) even if the assumption isn't proved, we aren't sure it's wrong.
 
So that study should be taken with a grain of salt
The issue with "nuclear" winter isn't so much the bombs themselves, it's the dust and ash that makes it up into the stratosphere (most of the stuff that doesn't get so high falls out pretty quickly, so is not of significance in driving longer term cooling).

Now, a nuke in the middle of a desert isn't going to be an issue (throws a little dust up but nothing too major), so, even an extensive campaign of above ground testing is unlikely to trigger a nuclear winter.

A nuke on a city is soemthing of a different matter. You don't just have a bit of dust kicked skyward by the blast, you've also got a firestorm burning the rest of the city to the ground... and driving considrable transport of ash etc. upwards.

Now, the problem is, firestorms haven't exactly been common since WW2 and it's kinda hard to get permission to burn a city to the ground even for science, so we have little observational data on what happens in the atmosphere above a firestorm. With little observational data it is thus hard to generate a realistic parameterization of the vertical distribution of ash and dust to input into a climate model....
 
Now, the problem is, firestorms haven't exactly been common since WW2 and it's kinda hard to get permission to burn a city to the ground even for science, so we have little observational data on what happens in the atmosphere above a firestorm. With little observational data it is thus hard to generate a realistic parameterization of the vertical distribution of ash and dust to input into a climate model....

Yes, this is the biggest issue for the accuracy. The parametrization is done basically on data of massive forest fires (which are much lower in temperature than the city firestorms produced by a nuclear heatwave, and still, some of the soot particles reach the stratosphere), and large eruptions (although the particles expelled into the atmosphere by volcanic eruptions are typically 5 times larger, in average, than the soot of high temperature fires, they stay airborne up to 2 years).
 

BlondieBC

Banned
For sure, however the map fails to reflect the missile field for Grand Forks, or is this current targets? Eastern NoDak had as many silos as the western area. Third largest nuclear power in the world.

I am pretty sure that is a current map. It is missing the Titan II fields in Arkansas that go mid-1960's until end of cold war, so we can exclude that time period. It is also missing the B-52 base in Blytheville Arkansas, surely a top 500 target, closed in 1990's and I think going back to 1950's. And it appears to be targeting a power plant in White County, which was not built until around 1980. The only other military target there is a national guard BN HQ. And since it does not have Jonesboro which is much bigger than Searcy, it is not going for population. And it looks like it is going for some big power plants elsewhere in state. Either that or pine tree plantations.
 
Yes, this is the biggest issue for the accuracy. The parametrization is done basically on data of massive forest fires (which are much lower in temperature than the city firestorms produced by a nuclear heatwave, and still, some of the soot particles reach the stratosphere), and large eruptions (although the particles expelled into the atmosphere by volcanic eruptions are typically 5 times larger, in average, than the soot of high temperature fires, they stay airborne up to 2 years).

What about Second World War firebombings? They might not have been of such magnitude as an atomic war, but might not any soot injected by firebombings in Germany and Japan have made an impact on the temperature data at that time?
 
What about Second World War firebombings? They might not have been of such magnitude as an atomic war, but might not any soot injected by firebombings in Germany and Japan have made an impact on the temperature data at that time?

Actually, the winter of 46-47 was unusually cold... Which probably doesn't mean anything, but take it for what it's worth.
 
Actually, the winter of 46-47 was unusually cold... Which probably doesn't mean anything, but take it for what it's worth.

In fact, since the 40s there was a trend of short-term "global cooling", that lasted well into the 60s, due to the cooling effect of industrial aerosols (like soot). While it's agreed that this cooling was mostly of industrial origin, it's also interested to not that it started during the WWII, which could have enhanced the effect at the very start. Or masked it.
 
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