How many nukes would it take to destroy a city?

Originally posted by Beelzabub
Awesome info there my friend I am pleased to see this kind of response, not nasty but resource exposed fact......cheers mate!

While i am glad you found the information useful i am rarely proud of calling people ignorant, however accurate the description seems to be, so i am somewhat relieved that you can and do take such a enlightened view of your own shortcomings.

By dirty bombs I in fact mean mutated forms of disease and Parasitic infections will in fact be contained in these individuals, as well as radiation, and the continued exposure to these persons makes them in fact a simple version of a dirty bomb.

Well the Russians were always accused and suspected of having very, very large chemical and biological programs and the means to deliver it with ballistic weapons to the United states... If that is what you mean by dirty bombs then yes.

Dirty Bombs are essentially depleted yet radioactive materials used to cause biological destruction. I would define the walking wounded and dying as that in a minimal relation to that type of device.

Exposure to such radioactive waste would be VERY limited in scope as it's hard ( like biological and chemical agents) to disperse. Considering the fact that such radioactive agents would probably quickly incapacity anyone who comes in direct contact with it the 'zombie' scenario of walking infectious half dead is probably very far fetched. The same is largely true for chemical agents as while they might have a longer incubation period there is not many good ways to make the condition 'infectious'.

They be also a harbinger of destruction in the mutated yet unseen forms of destruction we can not yet anticipate, so again another type of bio-dirty bomb on legs wouldn't you say.

Biological weapons is a whole different ball game and there existed and exists today various means of not only making such agents with long incubation periods but to make them both somewhat selected in target selection as well as highly infectious. If either side managed to deploy such weapons over continental distances all activities outside of shelters would have had to take place in chem/bio suits for many, many months as the biological agents become degraded or their hosts died off.

Nuclear weapons were always the least of the worries of the well informed strategic planners.

I see however an atrocity is an atrocity, to many civilians were lost, but yet I have to admit the code of Hirohito pitted the US and Allies against every capable hand able to fight even some of the women and children so it was a catch 22.

I have made my views of that atrocity quite clear ( the US had the war won long before and the US leadership merely wanted to test/demonstrate the new weapon) and i am trying to make clear that if the Japanese citizens of those cities were in fact in their normally allocated air raid shelters the casualties would have declined by 80% or more. The reason they were not in their shelters is because air raid sirens were no longer being sounded for singular aircraft as that disrupted normal civilian/industrial activities too greatly; not a mistake they would continue to make and not one that has to be duplicated. If even a minimum of preparation is made in target nations the expenditure of around 500 - 1000 dollars per person can ensure that with proper warning casualties will be reduced to 1-2% of a target population.

Sadly nuclear wars were and still are very much wars that will have both winners and losers and as always largely determined by the side who best prepared to wage it. For this reason and for this reason alone the US would have ( and still will) in my opinion very likely lose the next world war.

This is not something i wish for or want as much as it's what US disarmament and economic disintegration predicts.

Stellar

[edit on 1-10-2008 by StellarX]

reply to post by StellarX


Fair enough I respect that but I still think the utter fallacy of that strike was that it was indiscriminate and while those who served in good standing with the jap war machine be they old lady or child where trained from birth its better to die then to fail your Emperor. The use of that weapon was overkill and destroyed more than it saved in lives and innocence was lost forever that day.

"the expenditure of around 500 - 1000 dollars per person can ensure that with proper warning casualties will be reduced to 1-2% of a target population. "

You are kidding. A few megatons dumped on a city makes air raid shelters completely irrelevant (even if you can get there during that four-minute marning). Even in severe conventional bombing (e.g. Dresden) thwey provide no protection and you just get shelters full of dead people, or dying people trapped under thousands of tons of rubble.
And that's just the immediate effects - when you have fallout and the collapse of your national infratructure to deal with, things are a lot worse.
The joke of 'Protect and Survive' did not make it into the modern era.

Originally posted by Wembley
You are kidding. A few megatons dumped on a city makes air raid shelters completely irrelevant (even if you can get there during that four-minute marning).

In reality 'bolt from the blue' nuclear wars were always unlikely to happen given how vulnerable conventional assets were to such sudden strikes on both sides. A nuclear war would have started with a lengthy period of tensions where both sides started to ramp up their defenses and spreading their forces from bases and air fields to sustain nuclear strikes as well as deliver them before being destroy. Such events would have allowed prepared countries to not only evacuate their cities of 'excess' populations ( those who are not needed for the war effort) but to take all the food it could quickly muster into shelters for the remaining urban/industrial work force.

Obviously you can not prepare fully for a nuclear war in a month or two and this is why those countries with the largest food and fuel stores distributed over their countryside would have had by far the best chance of riding out the initial strikes with relatively impunity.

Even in severe conventional bombing (e.g. Dresden) thwey provide no protection and you just get shelters full of dead people, or dying people trapped under thousands of tons of rubble.

Dresden was a hospital city flooded with refugees from the east and soldiers and civilians from other evacuated cities. It could not accommodate so many and when the air strikes came these people were left exposed above ground to meet their fates. The people in air raid shelters were as always quite safe from everything but severe fires which would destroy the ventilation systems thus suffocating the occupants. Since modern shelters can have both such ventilation systems, with means to shut them off, and entirely internalized re-breathing type facilities there are exists no excuse for not being prepared.

And that's just the immediate effects - when you have fallout and the collapse of your national infratructure to deal with, things are a lot worse.
The joke of 'Protect and Survive' did not make it into the modern era.

It's 'duck and cover' but that was always a joke to anyone who were allowed to read anything about nuclear weapon effects. The immediate effects are by far the most severe and both fallout and other effects are for most practically purposes gone within a month at the latest with limited and 'covered' ( chem/bio or other protective clothes) activity outside of shelters possible right after the explosions. Especially emergency and military workers will have to continue functioning as normal and with proper education and training/equipment there is absolutely no reason why a nation needs to be overwhelmed in a nuclear war.

It's ALL about preparation and there are very legitimate and obvious reasons why educated and informed people arrived at the following conclusions.

Management Agency (FEMA), the Soviets have built at least 20,000
blast-resistant shelters to protect approximately 15 million people, or
roughly 10 percent of the people in cities of 25,000 or more. The FY 1981
Department of Defense Annual Report to the Congress noted that
"the Soviets will probably continue to emphasize the construction of
urban blast sheltering. If the current pace of construction is continued,
the number of people that can be sheltered will be roughly doubled in
1988." The Soviets apparently plan to evacuate and disperse the general
population to pre-assigned resettlement areas where they will be fed
and either provided with a fallout shelter or put to work building one.

According to Soviet civil defense SOVIET FATALITIES (SAY SOVIETS): "BETWEEN THREE
AND-FOUR PERCENT" manuals, this plan for the evacuation and dispersal of people is designed
to limit casualties in the event of a nuclear exchange to between three and four percent of the
population. Modest, feasible measures to protect machinery from nuclear effects greatly increase
both the probability of industrial survival and U .S. retaliatory force requirements . . .
[FEMA and the CIA] estimate that the Soviet Union, given time to implement
fully these civil defense measures, could limit casualties to around fifty million, about half of
which would be fatalities. This compares to the approximately 20 million Soviet fatalities suffered in
World War II . There is no significant U .S. civil defense effort, and the Soviets
recognize this. The potential impact of Soviet civil defense on our deterrent
could be devastating.

www.tfxib.com...

Soviet Union. The role civil defense plays in Soviet strategy is significant. Based on the view that nuclear war is a clear possibility and that civilization is protectable, the Soviets have implemented a massive and thoroughly integrated civil defense effort.22 Soviet leaders have shown interest in civil defense for many years, but they enhanced their efforts following the 23rd Party Congress in 1966. Despite SALT I agreements in 1972, the U.S.S.R. further intensified its civil defense program. CD currently ranks as a separate force organizationally equal to other Ministry of Defense Forces. The CD chief, General of the Army Altunin (four-star rank), is also Deputy Minister of Defense with three CD deputies of colonel-general (three star) rank serving under him. A Stanford Research Institute (SRI) study23 in 1974 stated that there were at least 35 to 40 active list Soviet army general officers holding posts in the Soviet CD system, which is intricately organized in the 15 constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. The SRI report mentioned a three-year CD military officer candidate school that might indicate the Soviet interest in a continuing civil defense program.

The Soviets spend the equivalent of more than $1 billion annually (the CIA in Soviet Civil Defense estimates approximately $2 billion) on their CD program and have conducted some tests of their city evacuation plans. Although the extent of these tests is not fully known, they concentrate efforts on protecting political and military leaders, industrial managers, and skilled workers. Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard sees the CD organization under Altunin as "...a kind of shadow government charged with responsibility for administering the country under the extreme stresses of nuclear war and its immediate aftermath."24

The potential lifesaving effectiveness of the Soviet CD program is not a matter of unanimous agreement. However, several studies estimate casualty rates as low as two to three percent of the Soviet population in the event of nuclear war.25

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

In contrast to the U.S.'s desultory interest in civil defense, the Soviet Union is well advanced on a thoroughgoing program to protect its people against nuclear attack. The Soviet government has built shelters by the thousands and organized elaborate training programs, reported the Rand Corp.'s Leon Gouré, leading U.S. authority on Soviet civil defense, at a civil defense conference last week at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The Soviet civil defense effort is expanding steadily on a compulsory basis. "Once the Soviet government makes a decision of this sort," said Gouré, "it does not have to ask for public support or popular approval." Under directives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, all units right down to collective farms and apartment houses are required to organize so-called volunteer self-defense groups consisting of 48 trained fire fighters, shelter attendants and first-aid workers for every 500 residents. A claimed 22 million Soviet citizens—10% of the whole population-serve in these formations. Since 1955, these units have carried through three compulsory training courses for all citizens. This winter, says Gouré, the Soviet Union is giving every urban citizen between the ages of 16 and 55 an 18-hour course in how to protect himself against nuclear attack and how to behave in shelters. "Soviet shelter facilities," says Gouré, "are the most extensive anywhere." They range from concrete installations in every factory to the root cellar under every peasant hut.

www.time.com...

I have a great deal more specific and pertinent information if you are interested in just how survivable a nuclear war in fact is.

Not hoping it doesn't happen isn't enough and belief in defeat will result in defeat just as surely as preparation for victory will allow it.

Stellar

You'd need one missile to wipe out a large city like New York.

One Topol-M with 8-10 MRVS all independently targetable, so target each MRV for each borough, one for downtown manhattan one for uptown, one for brooklyn, one for queens, ok two for brooklyn, and hell you might even have a warhead or two left over to nuke westchester county.

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
Some of these guesses are unbelievable.
The Tzar bomba was 50 megatons and had an initial blast radius of about 15 miles.

It seems to me that a lot of this is completely hyped and over-exaggerated in order to create a wall between us and nuclear warfare. I argued once with someone who said that the original Trinity blast broke windows 100 miles away. I don't believe it.

The real danger regard nuclear warfare is not the initial blast, IMO.

The true problem with nuclear warfare is probably that it is not as bad as we have made it out to be.

Hence, after the first few nuclear exchanges, when we see that there is not total devastation, and that nuclear warfare is survivable, we begin exchanging nuclear blasts with more ease -- pretty soon we've destroyed everything. Because -- we have A WHOLE LOT of nuclear weapons.

I suspect that nuclear warfare will kill the planet with a thousand deep cuts as opposed to just a half-dozen.

Originally posted by Anderi
Would one blast be enough?

The answer is one.

One low yield 10kt nuke placed at a stategic location would be all that you need to completely incapacitate a city.

i.e. a key freeway interchange or airport (or both), a center of government, a downtown district. Any of the above and you would wipe out it's economy, everything would come to a standstill and panic would ensue.

[edit on 4-10-2008 by In nothing we trust]

You have still got to be kidding.

Originally posted by StellarX
Such events would have allowed prepared countries to not only evacuate their cities of 'excess' populations

So where would you evacuate London to exactly? Sweden?

Since modern shelters can have both such ventilation systems, with means to shut them off, and entirely internalized re-breathing type facilities there are exists no excuse for not being prepared.

Er, how is any of this going ti survive EMP? No electronics, no power.

Have you any idea what it would take to consutct that sort of facility for a million people? And how amy are going to make it to the shelter?

It's 'duck and cover'

'Protect and survive' was the notorious UK booklet.

The immediate effects are by far the most severe and both fallout and other effects are for most practically purposes gone within a month at the latest with limited and 'covered' ( chem/bio or other protective clothes) activity outside of shelters possible right after the explosions. Especially emergency and military workers will have to continue functioning as normal and with proper education and training/equipment there is absolutely no reason why a nation needs to be overwhelmed in a nuclear war.

BUT THERE IS NO CITY LEFT AFTERWARDS. And basically no country.
Gone, with no infratructure to support all those people who have miraculously survived. No way to treat the hundreds of thousands injured or affected by radiation.

According to Soviet civil defense SOVIET FATALITIES (SAY SOVIETS): "BETWEEN THREE
AND-FOUR PERCENT" manuals

Er, might that have been a) a but outdated given the weapons they were facing and b) extremely optimistic for morale purposes?

I apologize for not putting the word Russian before the word nuke. i was describing a nuke built by russia as it was described to me via my instructor. yes i was in the military. if i can find my dd214 ill post it along with my ribbons/insignia. for those in the know i was stationed at F.E. Warren, under the command of the 90th space wing. google it.

Originally posted by Wembley
You have still got to be kidding.

Originally posted by StellarX
Such events would have allowed prepared countries to not only evacuate their cities of 'excess' populations

So where would you evacuate London to exactly? Sweden?

You do know what underground is don't cha?

Since modern shelters can have both such ventilation systems, with means to shut them off, and entirely internalized re-breathing type facilities there are exists no excuse for not being prepared.

Er, how is any of this going ti survive EMP? No electronics, no power.

Have you any idea what it would take to consutct that sort of facility for a million people? And how amy are going to make it to the shelter?

If you bothered reading some of those links you would have read the U.S. Gov it self admitting Russia has built 20,000 shealters for 15 MILLION of it's people in the 70's, and by now they have more.

It's 'duck and cover'

'Protect and survive' was the notorious UK booklet.

The immediate effects are by far the most severe and both fallout and other effects are for most practically purposes gone within a month at the latest with limited and 'covered' ( chem/bio or other protective clothes) activity outside of shelters possible right after the explosions. Especially emergency and military workers will have to continue functioning as normal and with proper education and training/equipment there is absolutely no reason why a nation needs to be overwhelmed in a nuclear war.

BUT THERE IS NO CITY LEFT AFTERWARDS. And basically no country.
Gone, with no infratructure to support all those people who have miraculously survived. No way to treat the hundreds of thousands injured or affected by radiation.

According to Soviet civil defense SOVIET FATALITIES (SAY SOVIETS): "BETWEEN THREE
AND-FOUR PERCENT" manuals

Er, might that have been a) a but outdated given the weapons they were facing and b) extremely optimistic for morale purposes?

And no it's NOT outdated, it's YOU who's assuming it's outdated for YOUR personal feelings against Russian tech.

[edit on 6-10-2008 by wantawanta]

none.....just tell everyone there is one and let them destroy themselves in the panic.

It is possible to multiply the destructiveness of current warheads by replacing the Uranium or lead tamper with Cobalt... Co 50 is heavily radioactive with a half life of 5.2 years.

This means that people couldn't 'wait out' the normal radioactive fallout decaying and it would contaminate the food chain and water supply

1.6 Cobalt Bombs and other Salted Bombs A "salted" nuclear weapon is reminiscent of fission-fusion-fission weapons, but instead of a fissionable jacket around the secondary stage fusion fuel, a non-fissionable blanket of a specially chosen salting isotope is used (cobalt-59 in the case of the cobalt bomb). This blanket captures the escaping fusion neutrons to breed a radioactive isotope that maximizes the fallout hazard from the weapon rather than generating additional explosive force (and dangerous fission fallout) from fast fission of U-238. Variable fallout effects can be obtained by using different salting isotopes. Gold has been proposed for short-term fallout (days), tantalum and zinc for fallout of intermediate duration (months), and cobalt for long term contamination (years). To be useful for salting, the parent isotopes must be abundant in the natural element, and the neutron-bred radioactive product must be a strong emitter of penetrating gamma rays.

Table 1.6-1
Candidate Salting Agents
Parent Natural Radioactive Half-Life
Isotope Abundance Product
Cobalt-59 100% Co-60 5.26 years
Gold-197 100% Au-198 2.697 days
Tantalum-181 99.99% Ta-182 115 days
Zinc-64 48.89% Zn-65 244 days

The idea of the cobalt bomb originated with Leo Szilard who publicized it in Feb. 1950, not as a serious proposal for weapon, but to point out that it would soon be possible in principle to build a weapon that could kill everybody on earth (see Doomsday Device in Questions and Answers). To design such a theoretical weapon a radioactive isotope is needed that can be dispersed world wide before it decays. Such dispersal takes many months to a few years so the half-life of Co-60 is ideal. The Co-60 fallout hazard is greater than the fission products from a U-238 blanket because many fission-produced isotopes have half-lives that are very short, and thus decay before the fallout settles or can be protected against by short-term sheltering; many fission-produced isotopes have very long half-lives and thus do not produce very intense radiation; the fission products are not radioactive at all. The half-life of Co-60 on the other hand is long enough to settle out before significant decay has occurred, and to make it impractical to wait out in shelters, yet is short enough that intense radiation is produced. Initially gamma radiation fission products from an equivalent size fission-fusion-fission bomb are much more intense than Co-60: 15,000 times more intense at 1 hour; 35 times more intense at 1 week; 5 times more intense at 1 month; and about equal at 6 months. Thereafter fission drops off rapidly so that Co-60 fallout is 8 times more intense than fission at 1 year and 150 times more intense at 5 years. The very long lived isotopes produced by fission would overtake the again Co-60 after about 75 years. Zinc has been proposed as an alternate candidate for the "doomsday role". The advantage of Zn-64 is that its faster decay leads to greater initial intensity. Disadvantages are that since it makes up only half of natural zinc, it must either be isotopically enriched or the yield will be cut in half; that it is a weaker gamma emitter than Co-60, putting out only one-fourth as many gammas for the same molar quantity; and that substantially amounts will decay during the world-wide dispersal process.

.

Originally posted by StellarX
Such events would have allowed prepared countries to not only evacuate their cities of 'excess' populations
So where would you evacuate London to exactly? Sweden?
You do know what underground is don't cha?

Yes. And how does that help, and what does it have to do with evacuating out of the city? Even in WWII it only sheltered a small fraction fo the population.

If you bothered reading some of those links you would have read the U.S. Gov it self admitting Russia has built 20,000 shealters for 15 MILLION of it's people in the 70's, and by now they have more.

That's way under 10%, so the other 90% are still going to get toasted.
And how many opf those 10% would make it to the shelter, and how many shleters would survive an attack?

And no it's NOT outdated, it's YOU who's assuming it's outdated for YOUR personal feelings against Russian tech.

I have a lot of respect for Russian tech (as you'd know if you followed my postings) - they remain ahead of the US in many areas. But regardless of tech, there is no civil defence solution to a hydrogen bomb. There has been a lot of research in this area and the facts are very stark.
I don't know what sort of shelter you think is capable of surviving a modern nuclear exchange in a targeted city -- or what you think they'd find when they opened the hatch afterwards. "The living will envy the dead."

reply to post by Anderi


100-kt

Great. I looked at the primary target sites. I live in the middle of no where, turns out there is a base three miles from here that is a primary target. Owell at least I wont feel anything,lol

Ama

Originally posted by Wembley
So where would you evacuate London to exactly? Sweden?

The rest of Britain?

Er, how is any of this going ti survive EMP? No electronics, no power.

Independent power supplies ( gasoline works just fine) and it's not hard/impossible to shield things when they are not connected to networks or made with the intent to be shielded.

Have you any idea what it would take to consutct that sort of facility for a million people? And how amy are going to make it to the shelter?

Actually we are talking about tens of thousands of shelters to house those citizens that must remain in cities the rest being evacuated to the countryside where they shelter space is much cheaper and food and supplies easier to store safely. As for the 'having any idea' Germany managed to continue functioning and feeding it's citizens under day and night raids creating the defense infrastructure as they went along. These things are not complex or comparatively expensive and merely requires political will hence the fact that some countries are prepared while others are not.

BUT THERE IS NO CITY LEFT AFTERWARDS. And basically no country.
Gone, with no infratructure to support all those people who have miraculously survived.

With the major reductions that have happened to strategic arsenals cities will not be the first targets or targeted unless they are military hubs. To suggest that cities would be entirely destroyed and that all infrastructure would be rendered useless is one of the arguments put forward by the desperately uninformed or severely misinformed. This has never been the case and if you refuse to do any research at all there is only so much i can show you.

As for people miraculously surviving it will simply be a question of physics as it typically is and was in Nagasaki and Hiroshima where so many survived despite being caught almost completely unprepared.

Industrial dispersal. The Soviets have been involved in an industrial dispersal program for more than 15 years. Their approach to the program has been and continues to be the siting of new industrial complexes in towns and settlements with populations of 100,000 people or less. The program has several advantages for the Soviets. First, it is of great economic importance from the standpoint of accelerating and expanding their economic development; this is especially true regarding growth of such sparsely developed areas as Siberia. Second, it prevents high concentrations of industry in a small number of large industrial centers and helps the Soviets make better use of their abundant natural resources. Third, dispersal creates a proliferation of aimpoints for U.S. strategic planners and greatly complicates targeting tasks.

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

Industrial hardening. The Soviets have an ongoing program designed to harden their industrial base. Included in this program are underground facilities, new plant construction techniques, construction of duplicate plants, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, and expedient techniques. The first three hardening methods can be productively utilized only for new facilities and require a long lead time for fruition. The fourth method, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, has near-term implications but is expensive. The fifth means, expedient techniques, is relatively inexpensive and has short-term implications; it will be the focus of this discussion.

If current Soviet expedient hardening preparations for protection of their industrial base are implemented on a large scale, the effectiveness of a U.S. retaliatory capability could be significantly degraded. By utilizing relatively inexpensive and simple expedient techniques such as packing machinery in sandbags, the Soviets could make their industry relatively invulnerable to overpressures of a few pounds per square inch (psi). Depending on the specific precautions taken in mounting and protecting machines, they can be made to survive overpressures in the range of 40 to 300 psi. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate specific hardening techniques.7

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

No way to treat the hundreds of thousands injured or affected by radiation.

Why would they be affected by radiation if they are in shelters or widely dispersed in the countryside? Why would it be impossible to provide them with the basic treatments that will allow the vast majority to survive external ( skin etc, for some reasoning presuming that citizens can not be issues with proper NBC suits and trained in their use) fallout effects? Why must all scenarios be based on stupid people running around as the nuclear weapons rains down? Any chance that you may consider not using Hollywood disaster movies as mental reference?

Er, might that have been a) a but outdated given the weapons they were facing and b) extremely optimistic for morale purposes?

Thanks for sharing with us your clearly expert opinion about weapons technology and Soviet propaganda. Fact is these are western sources that worked out the numbers based on the preparations being taken in WESTERN countries extrapolated for the massive Soviet preparations being observed.

In conclusion sadly a nuclear war would never have assured mutual destruction and few informed people believed that it would hence the preparations by many countries to create National ABM defenses as well as sufficient passive means to protect it's citizens and absorb whatever damage more active means could not prevent.

Stellar

Originally posted by Wembley
.Yes. And how does that help, and what does it have to do with evacuating out of the city? Even in WWII it only sheltered a small fraction fo the population.

Since it wasn't required. In fact before world war two many governments believed that bombers could not be stopped and that millions of citizens would die as results. As it turned out very few Britons died due to air raids despite very, very little preparation to protect them by means of shelters.

That's way under 10%, so the other 90% are still going to get toasted.
And how many opf those 10% would make it to the shelter, and how many shleters would survive an attack?

What that means is that a large proportion of the Major Urban populations could remain in cities to continue vital duties while the rest were dispersed temporarily to the cities edges where they would be safe from direct effects and relatively easily protected from fallout. Some of these citizens could then return to cities as soon as the initial nuclear exchanges were done to help in clean up operations and to possibly dig out those trapped in shelters.

This is pretty standard stuff and measures that could have been easily copied in the US had the government been intent on protecting it's citizenry.

I have a lot of respect for Russian tech (as you'd know if you followed my postings) - they remain ahead of the US in many areas.

No one cares if you do or do not as this is not about advanced technologies and largely a question of cement and transport.

But regardless of tech, there is no civil defence solution to a hydrogen bomb.

What makes hydrogen bombs so special then?

There has been a lot of research in this area and the facts are very stark.

Sure they are stark ( people will die) but when has that ever stopped anyone from starting wars? The Soviet Union lost more than 15% killed in the second world war and Germany close to ten 10% and both kept fighting. There is no obvious reason why properly prepared countries need to lose these numbers of people in dead civilians as some of the sources have shown so far.

I don't know what sort of shelter you think is capable of surviving a modern nuclear exchange in a targeted city -- or what you think they'd find when they opened the hatch afterwards. "The living will envy the dead."

Nuclear weapons ( presuming the average weapon size of 300-750 KT) exploded at it's nominal best effect height of 2 Km will kill mostly everyone that isn't in a purposely designed shelter for 1-3 Km's in either direction at which point even shallow self made/installed shelters a 1-2 meters under the soil in your garden would allow survival against overpressure and prompt radiation effects. Basically only very low altitude bursts/ground bursts nuclear explosions have any great effect on properly fortified shelters in their direct proximity. The fireball diameter is a given dead zone and depending on design decisions and the costs governments were willing to lay out tectonic/shock forces might destroy shelters for Km's surrounding a ground penetrating warhead.

As to these costs estimates range between tens and hundreds of dollars per person in urban areas depending largely on weather basements and buildings are designed and built with such preparations in mind.

Stellar

reply to post by StellarX


in the event of a nuclear war there wouldn`t actually be that much ` safe` area left in the UK - most of the country north of london was within the amber or red zones as all airforce bases , major cities and industrial area would have been / are targeted

for a safe area you really only have rural wales , some parts (well most really) of scotland and the south east of england - but thats about it and with a southerly wind , the south east is irradiated within 24 hours of a mass attack on london.

www.fas.org...

have a looky - a single 20MT blast ( as carried on the START II compliant SS-18 mod 6) will irradiate the south of england with a southern breeze of 15 mph for a 25 REM dose 96 hours after the
explosion

[edit on 8/10/08 by Harlequin]

This StellerX is a nut!

checking out the aftermath of Katrina and this weeks economic collapse and he seems to think that we can ride out a Nuclear exchange.

Piut simply, 10-15% of the respective populations died across a 6 year timespan in WW2... we're talking about this amoun tX4 of people dying in a week plus nearly all the infrastructure going up in smoke.

Even if parts of the infrastructure survived, the engineers and maintenance people who keep
it operating would be killed... we're talking about a total systemic breakdown.... and their will to continue to do as they're programmed as sheeple would also be blown away.

Even though arsenals have dimminshed, the remaining warheads are still trained on the key targets as to cause as much damage as cold war eras... the number of army/navy/air bases
has dropped too. Not to mention there's a lot of US hardware in forward projected bases that
Russia could engage by conventional means... leaving more ICBM warheads for population centres

I'll leave you with this, a study into the combined India/Pakistani arsenal being exchaned 100 15kt bombs

64.233.183.104...:BRc78lGJP5cJ:www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/pre pcom08/ngostatements/ClimateEffects.pdf+nulcear+exchange+conflict+presentation&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=opera