classical_hero
In whom I trust
It would mainly affect the Northern Hemisphere, so I wouldn't be that worried this far south.
If the Cold War turned into a real war, who'd have won?
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It would mainly affect the Northern Hemisphere, so I wouldn't be that worried this far south.
You know, Australia was almost certainly a Soviet target. Off the top of my head Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar and Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap would all have been targets. NCSH helps US submarines communicate in the Indian Ocean, JDFN was an early warning system for ICBMs and JDFPG has a key role in relaying SIGINT for US spy satellites. In other words: at minimum there would have been three nuclear probably more like six warheads aimed at Australia. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Perth and Sydney would have been hit because of their roles as fleet bases and potential safe havens for USN ships. I suspect Darwin and Townsville would have been hit because both are major garrison towns. Throw in RAAF Tindal and Canberra and that gives the Soviets most of the RAN, RAAF, ADF, three major strategic targets and knocks a major US ally out of the war for expenditure of no more than two dozen warheads. Given the number of warheads the Soviets had, something like ~20 000 active warheads in 1990 that seems like a rather good return on investment for such a trivial number.
Ajidica
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You haven't read On the Beach have you?
Timsup2nothin
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Honest truth is that if you detonate 20,000 nuclear warheads it really doesn't matter all that much where you detonate them.
You wouldn't detonate all of them. Some would be knocked out before launch. Others would be undergoing maintenance. Others would have been mothballed. Still others would be using old platforms and never intended for actual use. While others would be tactical nukes packing less of a punch. At a guess, a couple of thousand would have been the absolute limit of Soviet nuclear use in 'all in' scenario. That'd be more than enough to cripple the US and its allies with a reserve to hammer whatever else needs hitting. US numbers would have been somewhat less because the US had more accurate delivery methods and thus needed to expend less warheads to wreck the same amount of stuff.
Timsup2nothin
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The US submarine fleet is down to fourteen fleet ballistic missile subs (released info by US Navy. By design they are at sea about two thirds of the time (also released by US navy), but lets say only half of them are, so seven. 24 missiles each (also) with a minimum of five warheads per missile (sources are vague, but a drawing on the Lockheed product website for the D5 shows a five warhead cluster).
So 7*24*5=840 on target just from the submarine fleet based on a very conservative number at sea...and that's today. At cold war peak I'd guess just the submarine fleet would have delivered close to a couple thousand all by themselves. That's not 'crippling', that's the end of the world.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
That's the goal of the boomer deterrent: guaranteed Second Strike capability.
The problem is that you're assuming that for every warheads there's a viable target. That's not likely to be the case because boomers are meant to only hit stuff that hasn't already been hit. So while the Soviets might have had say twenty thousand warheads, they might only have had two to three thousand targets. Again, that's a lot of warheads. But two thousand is still an order of magnitude smaller than twenty thousand.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Not necessarily. Suppose the other side initiates the conflict by striking first. Even if all the cities, missile installations and air bases are hit and neutralized, and all the top echelon leadership killed, the boomers still abide. They can't all be hunted down and killed before they fire their missiles, nor can they be found and neutralized beforehand. They guarantee MAD.
Timsup2nothin
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Actually boomers are meant to work from complete lack of knowledge about what has or has not happened, and hit absolutely everything whether it has already been hit or not. And that is the function of every boomer at sea. So, every boomer at sea is putting a warhead on each of 120 targets...because you are right, it is unlikely that there really are more than 120 targets and they operate totally individually.
Keep in mind that there is no intention for boomers regarding those remote silo locations, as they are assumed to be empty. That 120 targets is flat out retaliatory and may not include anything of any military value at all. So, let's strike off the 120 largest metro areas, using the US for an example...hey, anything bigger than Salinas, California is gone. Okay, that was everything. I've been to Salinas.
If no nukes are involved, the US and its allies would have won easily.
Soviet military supremacy is a total myth. People seem to forget it was the Allies who, via lend-lease, returned Soviet Union from certain death and made it much more powerful than it would actually be without the help from Allies. For instance the US supplied the vast majority of Soviet's trucks, allowing them to have way more strategic and tactical maneuverability and better logistics than the Germans, who relied on horses throughout the war.
People tend to forget you don't need nukes to destroy cities. The Allies didn't need nukes to destroy Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, they did it via carpet bombing. Keep in mind by 1960s, jet bombers have way more payload than ww2 era bombers. NATO would wipe out major Soviet cities via conventional bombing just like they did to Germany and Japan.
NATO army had better organization, command, strategy, tactics, equipment, weaponry, like they always did. Soviet army is much like Imperial Russia, gigantic and seemingly powerful, but just like WW1 and WW2 showed, these don't mean everything. Germany singlehandedly defeated and almost defeated (if not for lend-lease) Russia during TWO world wars and NATO, with the full force backed by the US, stands no chance of actually losing the conventional war.
Soviet military supremacy is a total myth. People seem to forget it was the Allies who, via lend-lease, returned Soviet Union from certain death and made it much more powerful than it would actually be without the help from Allies. For instance the US supplied the vast majority of Soviet's trucks, allowing them to have way more strategic and tactical maneuverability and better logistics than the Germans, who relied on horses throughout the war.
People tend to forget you don't need nukes to destroy cities. The Allies didn't need nukes to destroy Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, they did it via carpet bombing. Keep in mind by 1960s, jet bombers have way more payload than ww2 era bombers. NATO would wipe out major Soviet cities via conventional bombing just like they did to Germany and Japan.
NATO army had better organization, command, strategy, tactics, equipment, weaponry, like they always did. Soviet army is much like Imperial Russia, gigantic and seemingly powerful, but just like WW1 and WW2 showed, these don't mean everything. Germany singlehandedly defeated and almost defeated (if not for lend-lease) Russia during TWO world wars and NATO, with the full force backed by the US, stands no chance of actually losing the conventional war.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
American lend lease kept the Soviets afloat, but Soviet tanks ended the war. I don't know if either statistic is useful beyond the years immediately surrounding the second World War.
I imagine it's been said by now, but our attitude in the case of war with the USSR was 'make them lose as well'; there wasn't really any question that one side would 'win' in the sense of seeming any different from a country that had just lost a war.
Carolus I
Chieftain
I am not so sure about football and I even doubt that might be too many survivors after a gobal nuclear war.
Maybe some rats or other species. Possibly on some isolated islands there might be some survivors who could repopulate the planet once again.
most likely...
I grew up during the Cold War in the Western part of central Europe - about 350 km from the Iron Curtain. I remember vividly the Peace Movement in the early 1980 who protested against the new arms race. Although I was still a schoolboy I have not forgotten the collective fear of nuclear annihilation. Our seat in a possible theater of war would be right on the stage.
Timsup2nothin
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I grew up about as far from the Iron Curtain as the size of the planet allows. I was also less than twenty miles from three of the limited number of runways on the planet at that time that could be used by nuclear loaded B-52s, making them top tier targets. In my school nuclear annihilation wasn't a fear, it was a certainty we just lived with.
Big stage.
Glad for both our sakes that today those fears are widely viewed as 'quaint'.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
So... Alaska or Florida? Or Hawaii?
Interesting. What I remember of 80-s, from the other side of the Iron Curtain, was similar tension. But the attitude of ordinary people was more like "Those bastards threaten us again. Well, not for the first time." In regards to news about SDI or middle-range missiles in Europe.
Carolus I
Chieftain
This must have been the early 1980s. IIRC 1982/83. After the SU installed a new generation of missiles (SS 20 or something like that) the NATO decided to counter this new threat with a new generation of missiles - the old logic of an arms race.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Double-Track_Decision
Did you aso have a kind of peace movement? Afaik there was at least in East Germany a peace movement. Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain protested against NATO missiles.
Strangely the East Germans did not protest against SU missiles, only against US missiles...
They only had to twist the abrevation "SU" or "US".
Peace movement in USSR was AFAIK only "official" one, promoted by state and party. Participating in 1-May demonstrations, blaming NATO in warmongering, supporting Soviet government in its actions to preserve world peace, stuff like thatDid you aso have a kind of peace movement? Afaik there was at least in East Germany a peace movement. Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain protested against NATO missiles.
. We lived in a small town, our family sometimes participated in such demonstrations - for us it was kind of social activity. To go outside, talk to people, have barbecue in the evening, etc.People who criticized Soviet government, dissidents, usually did it for the other things. Lack of freedom of speech, press, not enough good quality consumer products, for mistreating Warsaw pact allies, etc. Not for arms race. Generally people felt we were defending side, and almost nobody believed that USSR wanted to start war against NATO. People remembered the previous war which was too devastating.
Midnight-Blue766
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The cockroaches.
