For the first time, Russia has more deployed nuclear warheads than U.S.

The Washington Times ^ | October 1, 2014 | Bill Gertz

[Alter Kaker]

You don't need to destroy towns to defeat the enemy, just their ability to govern and resist. 1642 nukes might not be enough to annihilate them.

You must be joking. 1642 nukes isn't enough to stop Russia from being able to govern itself? As I indicated, just 300 could wipe every habitable spot of any significance off the map. If that's not a deterrent the word has no meaning.

[oh8eleven]

Mr. President, we must not allow...a mine shaft gap!
An obvious, and very funny, spoof on the missle gap scare that lasted for quite a long time.
That "gap" comparison was also deployed in the war between the 60's baby boomers and their parents - known as the "generation gap" and specifically, a "communications gap."
That all disappeared when parents started treating kids like their friends. Meh.

[rockinqsranch]

"Obama is turning us into A Number 2 in more ways than one."

There, fixed it for ya.

[diogenes ghost]

"Living close to a sub base in GA makes that worry moot."

Ain't being a target great?

My son works there (TRF) and lives a mile away, and we live about 20 miles west.

So I guess he lives in the bull, while we're in the 8 ring.

[Bringbackthedraft]

The KGB has Obama’s full dossier. He’s compromised........................... AHHHHHH, but do they have his original COB and University transcripts? If they did, wouldn’t they have made them assessable by now?

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Yeah, except in the 1960s we didn’t have the EPA.

Now we have a missile gap AND a mineshaft gap.

[ecomcon]

Just as a matter of academic interest, how many nukes would it take to cover every, single, square inch of the planet in nuclear fire?

A 20 kiloton device has a Moderate damage diameter of 2 miles. This gives us 3.14 square miles per device.

The earth has a gross surface area of 198 million square miles, of which approximately 52 million square miles are not under water or oceans.

So if indeed you want every square inch to have nuclear fire, we divide 198,000,000 by 3.14 and we get 63,027,354 20 kiloton devices.

For exposed land, 52,000,000 / 3.14 gives us 16,560,509 20 kiloton devices.

If my math is right.

[Norm Lenhart]

Attach turbine shafts to the corpses and you solve the worlds reliance on oil.

[cherokee1]

To answer your first nuclear fire question the math is simple: First calculate the surface area of the planet in square miles. Multiply by .25 to get the land area. Divide that number by 100. One big egg every 10 miles square should be enough to flame every land inch. But leave out one section where I live çause I’d rather not be there for the test.

[TheZMan]

Well...

Let’s say your average (modern) bomb has a 15 mile kill radius. That’s ~700 sq. miles (not counting fallout).

Land surface area of the Earth is (I believe) ~57,506,055 sq. miles.

82,151?

A lot more than 1,300.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#4: Why so you think we call Obama “ZERO”. It’s both his IQ and his goal of disarming America’s nuclear weapons.

[roadcat]

You must be joking.

I'm not joking. I said 1642 nukes might not be enough to annihilate them. I did not say it isn't enough to stop them from governing themselves, those are your words. So let's say you use 300 nukes to wipe out their big towns and cities. That doesn't stop them from commanding hidden silos and subs from attacking us further. You are naive. The nukes are primarily targetted at hardened command and control sites, silos and other offensive capable sites. Just one nuke possibly won't take out a hardened facility, so several would target them. You incapacitate the leadership and ability to respond in attacking us. First. Then you hit other sites. As I said, 1642 might not be enough. At one time we had over 30,000 nukes between us and the Soviets, as part of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

[SkyPilot]

War is coming, and I fear we will lose.

[tanknetter]

LaMay’s plan was to ensure there were 4 weapons for every site they wanted to destroy.

It's all mathematical, when it comes down to it. Say you want to take out a target. You have all the variables you list, plus the likelihood that the opponent has a decent ABM and A2A system that can attrit the inbound weapons. And that the target is designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

THEN you have the possibility that some element of the weapon system itself will fail, and the target won't be hit.

So when they guys who do targeting look at a target, they determine the need to take it out, then back into the probabilities of N number of weapons taking it out and when they get to the % probability they assign that many weapons to the target.

Apparently, under the old Cold War SIOP, there was a hardened communications center near Moscow that HAD to be taken out. In order to achieve a high degree of mathematical probability (something like 99.9997%) there were something like 10 nukes assigned to it.

[Alter Kaker]

So let's say you use 300 nukes to wipe out their big towns and cities. That doesn't stop them from commanding hidden silos and subs from attacking us further.

That's right. However Russia's 300 largest cities contain something like 60% of its population and something like 90% of its economic activity. You really think nuking those cities wouldn't "annihilate" Russia? C'mon. Yes I'm aware that doing so wouldn't guarantee the elimination of Russian command and control facilities, hardened and mobile silos, or ballistic missile submarines, but it would guarantee the elimination of Russia as a meaningful entity. That's one hell of a deterrant.

And you're right - of course there is no way to eliminate Russia's ability to launch a counterstrike with 1000 American warheads (or for that matter a million American warheads) - not unless you're positive we can hit every last silo and every last submarine before they launch. We can't do that, so why try?

[roadcat]

We can't do that, so why try?

That was the whole purpose of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Only a madman would trigger the firing of all those nukes, in turn unleashing total destruction of both sides.

When I was younger I thought I might survive a nuke here in a suburb of SF surrounded by hills. Until I found out the Soviets had targeted the SF Bay Area with many dozens of nukes. The devastation would be total for perhaps 100 or 200 miles diameter. You can be assured that our nukes aren't targeted only once per Russian site, with MIRVs that's a certainty.

It's not just the Russians we should worry about. China has MIRVs targeted at us capable of reaching any US city, stored away in 3 thousand miles of tunnels underground, always on the move. We don't know where they would be launched from.

[Alter Kaker]

I think you’re missing my point. I know what MAD is - I just don’t think you need thousands of warheads to guarantee destruction for any potential adversary and provide a meaningful deterrent. A few hundred warheads, maybe even a few dozen, would be enough to end civilization in any country on earth and cause the survivors to envy the dead. You don’t need to make the rubble bounce on every target - just enough of them to bring the order of things to a crashing halt and make anybody whose finger is on a button believe that in all likelihood a first strike will mean their own ruin.

[roadcat]

Point taken. Enough bombs and the order of things comes to a crashing halt. That has been deterrent enough to keep leaders of the USA and Russia from pressing the button. So why did we both construct over 30,000 nukes? Things are a lot saner now, with the reduction in numbers of nukes. What keeps us safe is that our enemies know the USA is the only nation to have used them against enemy cities, and that we would retaliate to annihilate them. We can’t destroy Russia without destroying ourselves, which is why we both reduced our nuke tally. We can survive losing a city or two, but not if the Earth is ravaged by many nukes. I think we’re both clear of each other’s views now.

[lavaroise]

The point is underground hardened installations peppering Russia require each several direct hits. We probably do not have enough hit probability to make it happen.

[lavaroise]

You just repeated KGB propaganda. The Earth is not going to die even if hit with 50000 nukes.

Australians predicted cancer rates would actually diminish because of lack of tobacco