I was wonder which countries would have got hit if nuclear war had broken out at the height of the cold war during 1980s. Obviously the US, USSR, and western Europe. But which other countries ?
Would China (as a communist, nuclear armed country which didn’t get on with the soviets) have been able to stay out ?
What about US-allied non-nuclear developed countries such as Canada and Austrailia ?
Did planners in the US and USSR take into account the “last man standing” when they assigned targets ? (e.g. if China was left unscathed with Europe, the US, and the USSR decimated then they would have been the undisputed super power)
I suspect that it could have gone very far down the line of ‘usual suspects’ - including the southern industrial centers of canada at least… (most of whom are very close to the US border - gulp,) and major centers in africa, south america, australia, and so on.
so… Chile versus ethiopia as the world’s remaining untouched superpowers? I dunno.
It depends on the circumstances of the war and how it developed.
The likeliest scenario was a conventional war in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The two sides had different doctrines on tactical nuclear weapons and these differences could have led to an escalation. Let’s say the Americans sank a Soviet cruiser in the Baltic using convential weapons. The Soviets might have then used a tactical nuclear weapon to sink an American aircaft carrier in the Mediterranean. The Americans might say this was a nuclear attack against a military target and retaliate by using a nuclear weapon against a military airfield in Hungary. The Soviets would then declare that the Americans had used nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact territory and retaliated by nuking an Army depot in Belgium. And it would grow with both sides claiming they were just responding to the initial attacks by the other side. In a situation like this, the use of nuclear weapons would have escalated over a period of days.
A second possibility would be an attempted first strike against the other side’s nuclear capabilties. In this scenario, the attacking side wants to hit the other side suddenly with a broad attack aimed at wiping out their ability to launch a counter-attack. Assuming it was a Soviet attack on the United States, the first wave would have been nuclear explosions in command centers like Washington, Colorado Springs, Omaha, Tampa, Raven Rock, Fort Worth, etc - most of which would presumedly be hit by nuclear weapons smuggled in and detonated on site. The goal of this first strike would be to kill the people who would have the authority to order a nuclear launch back against the Soviets. Then, in the hour of so of confusion after this attack, a second wave would knock out the missile fields and airbases themselves to prevent an American response once the chain of command was restored. Obviously such a plan would not be completely successful - some American weapons would survive and be available to attack the Soviet Union. But the assumption was that the side that launched a “first strike” would suffer a lot less damage than their opponent.
We can be virtually certain that any nuclear exchange, “tactical” or no, would have ramped up into a full scale cataclysmic war. There was just no balance, no check against it. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had SIOPs which predicated a superior response to an attack (real or perceived), with the assumption that he who holds cards in reserve loses the game.
Since the early 'Seventies and the deployment of advanced launch detection and tracking systems and robust communications links there was really no chance of a disarming first strike. The SSBM force alone would have been a broad and accurate enough of a response to devestate the USSR. There was never a chance of a “winnable” nuclear war; just various levels of destruction and survival, a fact appreciated by planners and game theorists but not (apparently) by many politicians and polemics.
To the OP: All major superpowers (U.S., Great Britian, U.S.S.R., China, probably France) plus much of Eastern and Western Europe would have receieved heavy pounding. We could expect at least a limited exchange in the Middle East as well, and areas of the Pacific Rim that are of strategic interest to the U.S. (Japan, Korea) would be hit, as would Canada and Iceland. No doubt the Arab and North African nations would have used it as an excuse to eliminate various miniority ethnic groups and the nation of Israel. India and Pakistan, assuming they didn’t take the opportunity to pound each other without outside interference, would have emerged as military and industrial superiors. Most nations in the Southern Hemisphere (South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Micronesia) would remain essentially untouched by primary effects and would have minimal direct impact from fallout (which can’t cross the equator) but would obviously suffer, or perhaps thrive upon, the resultant worldwide economic disruptions.
You can believe that if it makes you sleep better at night, but the reality was somewhat different. We came frightening close to being the United States of Radioactive Wastelands on numerous occasions, post-Cuban Missile Crisis. And Gen. Curtis LeMay never stopped championing for blasting the Reds back to the Stone Age. George C. Scott’s portrayal of LeMay’s the barely fictionalized avatar of General Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was scarcely an exaggeration. “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”
I was referring to height in terms number of weapons (and the distructive power of the weapons). Though I understood there were plenty of “near misses” during the 1980s.
We had Nike bases spread around the parks and open land so we would always be able to get back at them.I hope they are decommissioned because they are old.
Yeah, my Nikes are pretty old, too. But my Addidas are in good enough shape to retaliate if necessary
I always had a feeling (fantasy?) that after each side lost one major city, they would both realize that it’s time to put the toys back in the box and return to regular tanks and infantry warfare.
If Nemo’s scenario happened, both sides would lose a warship, a military installation and maybe one city. But after that, I think the leaders in Russia and Moscow were rational thinkers who would realize that there was nothing to gain by continuing to commit suicide.
And when did the movie come out? And when did LeMay retire?
Seriously, I am aware of Stanislav Petrov. However, the Doomsday Clock was closest to Midnight in 1953 (two minutes) and again in 1984 (three minutes). So I guess we each get a half point.
BTW, the Doomsday Clock is going to change again, presumably not for the better. We will know this Wednesday, 17 January 2007, at 1430 GMT.
The Nikes were anti-aircraft missile (many of which were nuclear armed), they were useless against ICBMs, and certainly not able to retaliate. And yes they were decommissioned:
I’m not sure about that. Surely the Israeli nuclear stockpile would have been enough deterrent to their neighbors even without the US around to back them up. Though that raises another question, would the soviets been OK with Israel being the last nuclear armed power left standing (assuming the US, USSR, Chine, UK, and France had been decimated).
It’s not clear that the leaders of many of the nations of the Middle East have a clear appreciation for their own mortality. The Sauds have some notion, and the Jordanians are a voice of stability, but at various times during the Cold War era Egypt, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iran, et cetera all seemed to be driving to the brink of full-on war with Israel. And little Israel might be strong and tough, and hold (and be willing to employ) the nuclear card, but if, say, Syria and Egypt got together and tried to exterminate Israel at any cost, the lands of Ancient Persia would be denuded.
I don’t know that the Soviets really gave all that much of a damn about Israel in particular except insofar as its existance provided a rich impetus to sell (and test out) weapon and defensive systems in exchange for hard cash. And while the Soviets might covet the petroleum resources there, they have sufficient resources of their own (and lesser commercial demand) that it wasn’t the kind of Achilles’ heel that it was for the members of NATO.
I quite agree that was their attitude during the cold war. But everything changes when all the other members of the nuclear club are left as smoldering ruins, and the only remaining nuclear power is a pro-US capitalist democracy. That was kind the point of the OP. Is there any evidence that either side of the cold war took this into account ? Surely if the “last man standing” is from the same side of the idological divide as you, that counts as “winning” even if you are not around to reap the benefits.
I’m not saying that you don’t make a valid point here, but I don’t think it was that much of a consideration for the Soviet Union per se. And Israel isn’t especially pro-US (or at least, subservient to our interests) except insofar as it garnered them military aid and support. I think the USSR would be far more worried, historically, about post-war engagements with China and Japan, and perhaps even Pakistan, than Israel. Ideological consanguinity aside, Soviet strategic thought and behavior didn’t put much credence in the loyalty of fellow Communists on the trail to planned economy heaven, and weren’t as threatened by capitalism per se as they were to the notion of losing control of their resources and populations. “Communism was just a red herring”; the Soviet system was an oligarchy, pure and simple.
It’s worth pointing out that both China and India could each lose half a billion people and not blink. They’d still be the most populous nations on the planet today.
Can’t find a cite on the interwab, but there was a weird revelation in recently found docs (IIRC) in East German archives, that had lots of Soviet nukes pointing at the major artistic and cultural centers in Italy - Florence, Venice, etc., the intention being that this would demoralise the western world.
Strangely, this was also an Al Qaeda plot - the Vatican was meant to be a target for a hijacked plane, pre-9/11.
Why would Israel be the last nuclear power standing? Neither the United States or the Soviet Union ever had plans to launch all of their nuclear weapons - every plan assumed that some nukes would be held in reserve in case of a future need (like for example if China or France or Israel started get “uppity”).
Granted, once you start throwing nuclear weapons around, things can easily get out of hand. Both sides were vulnerable to receiving enough damage that they would have politically collapsed as a nation. But even in such a case, there would have been some nuclear capabilities - just not the command structure left to use it.
IMO the amount warheads being thrown about in full-on M.A.D. exchange, at the height of the cold war (10s of thousands), this would certainly be the case. Especially as the “command and control” structures on both sides would have been actively targeted. So for intents and purposes the US, and USSR would no longer exist as a coherent political/military entity (and the UK+France would not exist period).
