The Myth That Nuclear Weapons Can Kill Everyone On Earth-many times over

No cargo plane or shipping container is going to launch a crippling EMP attack as described.

Any attack in space would require a nuke based on a satellite and we would know who had launched that satellite.

Where exactly is ISIS going to get a nuke?

 

"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
— Thomas Paine

No one can say what a really thorough thermonuclear exchange among major advanced countries (and China will be one soon) would be like. The problem with nuclear weapons is, if you're using them against a similarly-armed opponent, there is a huge advantage to going first, and throwing everything you can at the other side, and doing this without warning.

Here's one for the social theorists: suppose the USA were hit really badly by a lot of nuclear missiles and possibly other powerful weapons (biological,cyber). As the survivors picked themselves up and tried to rebuild .... which category of people do you think would survive the Darwinian selection:
(1) people with degrees in Feminist Anthropology, people who can deconstruct a text written by a dead white male to reveal the underlying structure of patriarchical domination, people with BA's in Black Studies, people who live and work in Silicon Valley designing web sites, ....
(2) people who can rewire a house, dig a well, lamb a ewe, take down a buck at 300 yards, fix a faulty valve train in their Ford F450, use a Caterpillar D6 to dig a drainage ditch (or bury bodies) ....

There probably wouldn't be elections in the US for a long time after a serious thermonuclear war, but when there were, the pollsters would have to change a lot of their assumptions.

 

As posted previously, all they have to do is take out Wall Street.

Correct, hence my statement about it.

Rogue nukes; either stolen from a former Soviet satellite or bought outright from Pakistan or NK.

 

You do know “Wall Street” is not a centralized thing right?

What nuclear weapons are in the hands of former Soviet satellite states now, 28 years after the Soviet Union fell?

You are aware Pakistan is fighting ISIS, yes? And what evidence do you have that North Korea would sell WMDs to terrorists?

 

Better

Even better - three 20 kt shipping container nukes taking out Texas City, Baytown and Port Arthur, knocking out a quarter of our refining capacity for years.

How about the ports of San Diego, New Orleans and the Houston ship channel?

There are many ways to untraceably cripple us, even with just a few 'baby' nukes...

 

His "that's about it" is what scientists, and everyone disagree with.

It's enough fall out to Annihilate the planet of everything living....even as far as the uninhabited desert, and underground for the next 1000 years.

 

Agreed. After 9/11, I tried to come out of retirement and go back into the military but was considered too old and too senior. Instead, I joined a CAP senior squadron. One of our jobs was to fly around the DFW metroplex and photo rig "high value targets" for analysis of weak points by experts. Besides usual places like water treatment plants a big one was the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. As you mentioned, many port cities are both vulnerable and weak points.

 

And this gets coordinated without any communication? Not a single cell phone transmission or email?

You do know that the fissile material that produced a nuclear weapon is indelibly marked by the reactor that created it right? You can trace a nuke to the source of its plutonium.

 

I strongly doubt Jihadists will care if the nuke is traced back to a Soviet-era uranium or plutonium source.

 

Where is this evidence of Jihadists having their hands on Soviet weapons-grade uranium or plutonium?

 

Oh goody, we can now have a nuclear war because some geek has told us it wouldn't kill us all. I hope Trump hasn't read this.

 

Did Putin sit down with you yesterday over tea and tell you this ?

 

You think the Russians want us to go with a counter-value strategy against them?

Military strategists focus on nuclear counter-force strategies because counter-value invites counter-value in return.

 

You think we don't have a good idea what the Russians (and before that the Soviets) would consider their priority targets.

A 475 kiloton nuclear warhead hitting Minot, North Dakota would only kill about 3,000 people. A one megaton nuclear warhead would add about a dozen killed to that number (see the website I referred to).

Yet Minot in any kind of nuclear conflict would most certainly be a primary initial target

 

You think nations spend several billion dollars and 30 years developing nuclear weapons just to sell one to three guys driving a truck?

 

There isn't any. That said, two thoughts for your consideration:
1) "An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

2) While some here may want to roll the dice on US national security, most of our military and intelligence leadership do not.

 

Having a "good idea" ≠ certitude.

I'll take your world for it. Why are you assuming that if an enemy only had one nuke that they'd pick Minot, ND as their target? If it were me, I'd hit the target that would do the most damage such as DC, NY or LA.

 

I do not think that we have sat down with Putin and told him our strategy but perhaps we have - Regardless, the point of Nuclear Deterrence is Nuclear Deterrence. The threat that large population centers will be hit is a deterrent.

 

A 1/2 megaton blast on a city of 48,000 people will probably kill more than 3000. I agree that the blast of a 1 megaton blast would not kill twice that number but it would kill a few more - I would have to compare the respective blast radius to give you a percent .. but this could be done.

Minot would only be one target. A strike of 2000 missiles would put the USA back into the stone age. Heck ... a couple EMP detonations done high in the atmosphere would put us into the stone age for many years.

 

The military and intelligence community’s base their policies off of evidence.

There is no reason to believe something for which we have a lack of evidence exists.

 

We don’t have to tell them our strategy and they don’t have to tell us theirs. Within a minute of nuclear missiles being launched, the strategy would be clear and we would retaliate in kind.

If Russia launched a strike on America primarily targeting cities over military targets, we would respond by targeting cities ourselves. They wouldn’t want their population to be annihilated anymore than we would, so they are going to target military targets not cities.

 

This is way too simplistic. I understand "the Golden Rule" do unto others as you would have them do to you. Seldom do the powers at be follow this rule in war.

 

Correct.

9/11 was a failure of imagination by the US leadership. "Never forget" is not only about the memory of the tragedy but continued vigilance to prevent another one. To assume Islamic Jihadists aren't looking for a bomb, even a dirty bomb, or that they wouldn't use it if they acquired one is just the type of thinking that led to 9/11 in the first place.

 

No, instead they follow Realpolitik and base their strategies off of need. There is not, nor has their ever in the last half century, been a need for a nuclear strategy that targets cities over military targets among any of the major nuclear powers.

 

And where will they get one? Do you have any evidence at all of weapons grade material in jihadist hands?