missed_gear:
MAD is a concept approaching 70 years of age. Conventional thought is that cities, left in tact with respective populations...will
starve-out within weeks.
I have always believed that a nuclear war would not kill a country outright, it would mortally wound it, leaving it to die a slow and painful death.
While nuclear weapons exist, M.A.D. will remain a deterrent of some form. Today, however, strategists are planning ways around this, and it raises two
assumptions:
a) that one can begin to believe that it can accept certain losses, and somehow gain an upper-hand or some advantage for recovery.
b) that a nuclear exchange can be controlled and regulated.
Both are myths. However, that does not mean that either one or both would not be considered as part of the tactical planning of eventually using
nukes.The use of nuclear weapons are ultimately the last resort to try, not to win the conflict, but to gain an advantage for recovery. However, when
the nukes fly, especially between Russia and the US, all countries with nukes would have to fire their own under the precept that you would need to
use them or lose them. No country could afford to hold off firing their nukes while waiting to see if they might be hit or not.
Russia's nuclear targeting systems are nowhere near as accurate as those of the US, they are better than they were, but what they lack in accuracy,
they more than make up for in deliverable payload and yield. Most Russian nukes are in the 5 to 20 megaton range. A single 20 megaton device would
completely destroy the whole of New York, but New York would receive multiple nukes, as would every other major western city.
My own country, Britain, could not survive a full scale nuclear exchange. In fact, it would be one of the first of the western countries to be hit.
Fylingdales in Yorkshire would be taken out first, as that is the listening post for nuclear launches for both Britain and America and NATO. By the
time the first missile hit America, Britain would already be no more. This is why Britain does not have nuclear shelters, there would be no point, you
cannot save the population in a country as small and compact as Britain. If given enough time, and if I wanted to survive, I would try to make it to
one of the islands off the western coast of Britain and hunker down. If I managed that and survived, I would then have to wing it.
For Britons, the advice is to stay at home and build makeshift adhoc shelters. These would be nothing more than fire traps and fallout collection
points, the massive over-pressures of nuclear detonations notwithstanding, and the somewhat deluded optimism that one's home will remain standing and
fire proof. For any surviving government, they would not want a large population survival rate. The less people who survive the less problems that
would hamper any recovery, and also, the less to feed and try to give medical aid, supplies of which will not abundant.
On the European continent, the situation would be very similar, although the Swiss seem to be better prepared, certainly more so than Britain. How
they would cope in the aftermath I don't know? If they have already buried equipment and facilities and stock piles in case of nuclear war, they might
do okay, but they would still have to contend with a contaminated Europe. Germany and France will be just as decimated as Britain, and none of the
other European countries would fare much better.
A nuclear exchange would unfold in waves of tactics and strategy until it escalated to a full-on nuclear exchange. In order of targeting, military
sites and government infrastructure would be first hit, along with non-governmental and non-military communications centres, and then finally civilian
population centres. Things would probably escalate so rapidly that tactics and strategy would be thrown out the window, and everything could be hit at
the same time.
It's all very grim and darkly negative, but I think it is essential that we face it head on, and treat the subject with the quiet respect it deserves.