Is Nuclear War Inevitable?

[DogOnPorch]

2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Dead Hand is so scary even the Russians don't leave it on all the time, they would only turn it on in a crisis.

So, if you are an Islamo nuclear bomber,  and you want to totally destroy America, you wait for a nuclear stand off, then you hit Russia not America, and then Dead Hand does the rest, your single small bomb incites the Russian survivable second strike system to destroy the CONUS with the full weight of the Russian deterrent force.

 

So crazy it's true...unfortunately.

[DogOnPorch]

...and folks want to flirt with war with these guys...over f----- Syria.

[Dougie93]

It's only earth shattering if it detonates at or near the surface, otherwise it's just a big light show.  Whereas a handful of Red Wings bombs at 100 kilotons will kick up enough fallout to make Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

[Dougie93]

34 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

...and folks want to flirt with war with these guys...over f----- Syria.

Well, this is the thing, in the event of the 5th generation hyper powered small groups non state nuclear strike, that is very likely going to escalate laterally as the paranoia goes through the roof, at which point you get to general thermonuclear exchanges by ragged start to insensate spasm at the end.

[DogOnPorch]

20 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

It's only earth shattering if it detonates at or near the surface, otherwise it's just a big light show.  Whereas a handful of Red Wings bombs at 100 kilotons will kick up enough fallout to make Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

 

"Clean" H-Bomb detonation altitudes had to be CAREFULLY figured out (thus all those tests) since all it takes is that fireball touching down even slightly to get MANY atoms a-hoppin'.

But man...you gotta figure the light from one of those 20 mt things is enough to make everything short of concrete burst into flames.

Edited January 14, 2019 by DogOnPorch

[Dougie93]

6 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

"Clean" H-Bomb detonation altitudes had to be CAREFULLY figured out (thus all those tests) since all it takes is that fireball touching down even slightly to get MANY atoms a-hoppin'.

But man...you gotta figure the light from one of those 20 mt things is enough to make everything short of concrete burst into flames.

Only out to about sixty miles or so, beyond that you are fine and it's just a big light show, so long as you don't look at the initial flash.

[DogOnPorch]

1 minute ago, Dougie93 said:

Only out to about sixty miles or so, beyond that you are fine and it's just a big light show, so long as you don't look at the initial flash.

 

Yup....on NYC/Manhattan...you'd burn everything right out to the Hamptons. Half of New Jersey is pretty much fried, too.

[Dougie93]

So for example, if/when Ivan nukes Toronto, I will be able to drive down to the escarpment and view it quite safely from here.  And since the prevailing winds go east from Toronto, Toronto would not be my problem. My problem would be Chicago, because when he nukes that, the radioactive black rain will spray down all over Southern Ontario.

[DogOnPorch]

4 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

So for example, if/when Ivan nukes Toronto, I will be able to drive down to the escarpment and view it quite safely from here.  And since the prevailing winds go east from Toronto, Toronto would not be my problem. My problem would be Chicago, because when he nukes that, the radioactive black rain will spray down all over Southern Ontario.

 

Here's a bit of Cold War history...re: plumes.

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/misc/targets1956/

[Dougie93]

1 minute ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

Here's a bit of Cold War history...re: plumes.

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/misc/targets1956/

Yes, I am aware, was a Cold Warrior after all, nuke suits on and whatnot, but that is 1956, the Soviets didn't really have much of a retaliatory capability then, they didn't catch up to the Americans until the 1970's.

[DogOnPorch]

Those would have mainly been B-47 missions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-47_Stratojet

 

[Dougie93]

The Soviets were totally out classed, they didn't stand a chance in the early Cold War, that's why they tried to use Cuba.  What they did however, was exploit Detente to buy time to catch up and close the gap.

[DogOnPorch]

There was a period when the USA had the BOMB...and the B-47...while the Soviets had the BOMB...a few examples...and nothing to carry it until the copy-cat Tu-4 Bull came out.

The USA didn't takeover the planet...could have though...heh.

Edited January 14, 2019 by DogOnPorch

[DogOnPorch]

...and just to hark on the B-47 one more time...beautiful aircraft. It is the grand-pappy of ALL modern airliners save those based on the Comet.

[Dougie93]

Except the Americans had hundreds of two stage fission-fusion "Supers" with the bombers to deliver them, while the Soviets only had a comparative handful and no viable delivery system to strike the CONUS until the Yankee Class submarines, holding position in the so called "Yankee Box"  limited first strike option, which the Americans were on top of.

 

Wasn't till Ivan went up under the ice with the Heavy Submarine Cruisers was he in a position to compete head to head.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Dougie93

[DogOnPorch]

8 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Except the Americans had hundreds of two stage fission-fusion "Supers" with the bombers to deliver them, while the Soviets only had a comparative handful and no viable delivery system to strike the CONUS until the Yankee Class submarines, holding position in the so called "Yankee Box" first limited first strike option.

 

Yes, those B-47s would all have had large fission bombs early on...then H-Bombs later in their careers. The later hi-tech B-58 was designed specifically for fast dash H-Bomb delivery.

Russian (boomer) subs are dangerous jokes. Surfacing to launch really isn't an option these days.

Edited January 14, 2019 by DogOnPorch

[Dougie93]

See, the reason why we didn't blow ourselves up in the early Cold War was that it wasn't really intercontinental, only the Americans could go intercontinental, all the Soviets could do was retaliate against Western Europe, and so that was going to be a beat down and so the Soviets backed down in 1962

The much more dangerous moment was 1983, where there was no margin for error and it was now indeed intercontinental and really was on hair trigger alert and if the balloon had gone up there were so many warheads on alert that it really would have been Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Dougie93

[DogOnPorch]

2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

See, the reason why we didn't blow ourselves up in the early Cold War was that it wasn't really intercontinental, only the Americans could go intercontinental, all the Soviets could do was retaliate against Western Europe, and so that was going to be a beat down and so the Soviets backed down in 1962

The much more dangerous moment was 1983, where there was no margin for error and it was now indeed intercontinental and really was on hair trigger alert and if the balloon had gone up there were so many warheads on alert that it really would have been Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

 

Yes...the Cold War peaked in the 80s. 

I posted a vid of the M-4 Bison earlier...the Russians then-claimed intercontinental bomber. One way only...that part they kept quiet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-4

One or two still sit at various places as museum pieces. 

Here's one... (Google Maps)

[Dougie93]

The Bomber Gap followed by the Missile Gap was simply the MIC porkbarelling machine in action, Eisenhower knew it was derp, but Kennedy exploited it cynically to defeat the GOP, and then created a monster which flew out of his control as the hysterical public and media demanded that he start World War Three right away and preempt the Soviets before we lost our total dominance of them.

[Dougie93]

To wit, if the kids today understood how the public is actually going to react when the nuclear fangs come out, they would not be so sanguine about the status quo, because when it comes to the collective of the masses, nuclear firestorm is too much to handle and so the face of it will make them act crazy.

[DogOnPorch]

17 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

The Bomber Gap followed by the Missile Gap was simply the MIC porkbarelling machine in action, Eisenhower knew it was derp, but Kennedy exploited it cynically to defeat the GOP, and then created a monster which flew out of his control as the hysterical public and media demanded that he start World War Three right away and preempt the Soviets before we lost our total dominance of them.

 

The Tu-95 soon followed, however. And it was a keeper as you know. It finally went into action for the first time in Syria...not only as a cruise missile platform...but, also as an old skool iron bomb delivery system. I've seen a few vids of large cells of Tu-95s radar carpet-bombing ISIS positions in Syria through heavy clouds...very Arc-Light/Viet-Nam style. The ubiquitous Tu-16 was fairly long range, as well...but not intercontinental.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arc_Light

 

6 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

To wit, if the kids today understood how the public is actually going to react when the nuclear fangs come out, they would not be so sanguine about the status quo, because when it comes to the collective of the masses, nuclear firestorm is too much to handle and so the face of it will make them act crazy.

 

Oh yeah. As near as I can tell...nobody cares. When was last time there was a BAN THE BOMB protest? 1975? 

Much rather work hard on banning Halloween or something...

Edited January 14, 2019 by DogOnPorch

[Dougie93]

The Anti-Nuclear Bolsheviks lost both their economic theory and their nuclear doomsday in one fell swoop, and so no longer had any Marxist Dialectic nor Malthusian Doomsday to justify themselves as Cassandra's.

Thus, by Darwinian forces, in order to survive, the peace commies switched to Cultural Marxism and Climate Change Malthusian Doomsday instead of thermonuclear.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Dougie93

[DogOnPorch]

3 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

The Anti-Nuclear Bolsheviks lost both their economic theory and their nuclear doomsday in one fell swoop, and so no longer had any Marxist Dialectic nor Malthusian Doomsday to justify themselves as Cassandra's.

Thus, by Darwinian forces, in order to survive, the peace commies switched to Cultural Marxism and Climate Change Malthusian Doomsday instead of thermonuclear.

 

Oh well. Putin, at least, has none of that romanticism when it comes to dealing with ISIS. 

The trouble with ISIS, though, is that it's pretty much the Mahdist War all over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War

Hard to stamp all of them out...and if you leave a few...soon there are more again. Never-ending...

But at least Putin need not worry about about how a few missed targets look in the media. Few care if Russia misses the mark and nails the hospital. Least of all, Russians.

[Dougie93]

14 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

The Tu-95 soon followed, however. And it was a keeper as you know. It finally went into action for the first time in Syria...not only as a cruise missile platform...but, also as an old skool iron bomb delivery system. I've seen a few vids of large cells of Tu-95s radar carpet-bombing ISIS positions in Syria through heavy clouds...very Arc-Light/Viet-Nam style. The ubiquitous Tu-16 was fairly long range, as well...but not intercontinental.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arc_Light

 

 

Oh yeah. As near as I can tell...nobody cares. When was last time there was a BAN THE BOMB protest? 1975? 

Much rather work hard on banning Halloween or something...

Tu-95 never stood a snowball's chance in hell of reaching its targets, they all would have been shot down over Canader.   Only the solid fuel quick spin up submarine launched ballistic missile delivered point blank by popping up out of the ice in Canadian waters put Orange Force in a position to threaten the Union with perish from this earth.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Dougie93

[Dougie93]

Because it's not the size of the bomb which makes the counterforce, R-36 20Mt isn't any better than other warheads for first strike, first strike is not about the bombs, its about how close you can approach by stealth and how fast you can get your shots off with as little warning as possible, en masse.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Dougie93