WI State Secedes with Nukes

What if the President himself is one of the plotters of the secessionist movement and gives them access codes and issues executive orders to the military to help the rebels commandeer nuclear weapons and such?

This way, you're turning people loyal to the president into people helping the plotters, perhaps even unknowingly.

Extremely unlikely, I know, but a still another avenue of possibility to consider...

That's akin to cutting your limbs off and feeding them to the wolves. No President of the US is going to willingly give up part of his country. Any rebel sleeper who might have gotten into office under such ridiculous odds could easily be sucked into power madness and say, "hey! I'm now president of all 50 states of the USA. Why should I listen to some fuck who wants to chip off my domain!?"
 
An example that might be easier to make possible would be if when the USSR broke up Ukraine refused to return their nukes.

The US military is tough since the active duty force is recruited from across the country and then stationed across the country. Texas probably has a lot of people who join, but they would be dispersed. Some of them might desert their regular units and return to Texas if the secession happened. On the contrary a lot of the people stationed in Texas are going to be from somewhere else and not likely to just turn over all their assets to the secessionist government.

In the submarines even if the captain and some of the officers are all Texans and committed to the secession it is likely the majority of the crew are going to be non-Texans and would oppose their captain when he said they were defecting to the Republic of Texas.
 
WI Chesapeake Bay gets hit by a massive earthquake (or other disaster). Washington is reduced to smoking rubble. The Mid-West is de estates by fires, riots and mud-slides. Congress and the Pentagon struggle to maintain control. Millions of Americans question the legitimacy of Washington. Meanwhile, Texas is stable, healthy and strong. Sailors (born in other states but stranded in Texas) swear allegiance to the only standing state in the union.
 
Nice Idea with some flaws

on Strategic Nuclear weapon there protected with launch codes, means the president has to give start code
so you can rule out US states with ICBM sites or nuclear Submarines.

another point is Bomber and tactical nukes
before someone come with argument they protected too, ehh nope
2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident
In Short: a B-52 had carry 12 cruse missiles to storage bunker across USA, 6 of the missile had still there nuclear warhead on and were ARMED.
to make matter worst nobody notice in Minot AFB that six nukes were missing...

Texas has several USAF base with nuclear bomb depot like Biggs Air Force Base
but here is another problem, the military personal is from across USA. even if Texas secedes (Or Another state)
that personal would be majority loyal to President of USA...

Minor point but at NO point were the nukes "armed" in any way. That requires the a fore mentioned codes to accomplish.

MOST military personnel are rather less political than one would imagine and those who work around nukes are screened and tested for reliability. (This does not of course mean that they can't have a 'bad' day or two. In fact the above cited incident among others at the time were specifically because of a general falling off of what was called the "nuclear-surety" culture in the military due to the end of the Cold war. This trend has been reversed, with extreme prejudice one might say :) )

In general you won't find many "Federal" military personnel that either tacitly or otherwise would "support" a secessionist state. None with access to nuclear weapons I would think as it's not a likely combination. And without that "support" then such as state would not have viable access to those weapons.

Riggerrob: That's not the stated scenario as at that point there would be no "need" for Texas (or where ever) to secede. Your talking about there being no "central authority" (aka, no "United" States) anymore. But the main issue still remains, the state doesn't have the command codes and there's (in your suggested scenario) no way for them to get them anyway. Assuming they have the tech base and resources they can tear the weapons apart and re-build them but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

And just so we're "clear" here having military personnel trained in storage, handling and deliver of said weapons has NO bearing on maintaining and building such weapons :) There are only a few contracted agencies that have the ability, training, and equipment to maintain and actually build nuclear weapons and THOSE require an extensive NATIONAL support and supply system to do so. On another note "nukes" have a shelf-life if you're not aware of it. Even assuming that a seceding managed to gain access to the proper codes they have somewhere between a year or two before most of the weapons are no longer "viable" at their stated operational yield. (Assuming, which is not a given that they will in fact work at all rather than just "fizzle" fire)

And, just to be thorough here, if anyone is considering having the seceding state take the nukes by force from the military let me tell you that they are stored with the option to "render them unusable" in a VERY short period of time if required. What the state would end up with is very radioactive wreckage rather than anything usable as a weapon.

One thing to note is even when a nuclear nation (USSR being the prime example) falls apart the one thing you do NOT see is nuclear command, control, and accountability falling apart. Despite the Ukraine example, (and many "conservative" cries of the Russian military selling "suitcase" nukes by the dozens) no cases have actually been found where nuclear weapons were EVER lost,stolen, or "sold" and accountability was always maintained. Professionals tend to be that way.

Randy
 
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