You’re the secretary of agriculture at an event in Iowa. Suddenly a military officer approaches you with what you know to be the nuclear football. He states that north Korea successfully launched a nuke on Washington DC and as a result you are now president. He states that it appears that the Koreans are getting ready for another attack and recommends launching nukes immediately.
What do you do?
I’ve edited your thread title. Please try to be more descriptive in the future. Thanks.
Assuming I can verify that the officer’s report is true, then order the military to launch a nuclear response at all military targets in North Korea.
The first thing I would do in this impossible* scenario is get on the phone to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss what the government’s options are. I’m not going to order nuclear holocaust without seeking some expert advice.
(* It’s impossible because I’m not a US citizen.)
What Giles says, with the addition that I would also like to have a quick chat with South Korea, China, Japan, and then the UN, probably in that order. I would like to determine, insofar as possible, where the next NK strike is aimed - whether at NYC, or Seoul, or somewhere else.
Assuming we have anything like good intelligence as to where NK has its missile launch sites, we will need to reduce the threat. If we have enough conventional missiles to take them out, fine - otherwise it may be necessary to pave them over with radioactive glass.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, gotta be sworn in first before I’m (or anyone else is president). #1 - find a judge.
Then, yeah, get on the horn with the Joint Chiefs, if any are left. All military on alert, all furloughs cancelled. Get FEMA rolling on helping DC. Mobilize National Guard - all states, etc.
I don’t think I would launch much of anything without AT LEAST consulting with the UN Security Council (UK, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, plus I think 3 other temporary members). Call immediate emergency security council meeting.
Scramble aircraft on both coasts, ready any/all missile counter measures we have (you KNOW there’s some secret shit there).
Definitely would not knee-jerk launch. That’s a one-way ticket to global war for sure. Even if there’s believed to be another launch imminent, there’s no way NK has the capability to disable all possible responses. Bombers from Japan, subs in the area, not to mention how many fixed installations all over the midwest plains. Plus I would need to know the EXACT details on the attack that already happened - missile? From where? They supposedly don’t have inter-continental capability. What yield? Suitcase bomb? Something else? So many questions!
Well, first thing would be determining how I’m in the chain of command and whether in fact I am the President. Before I could order a strike I’d need to be sworn in as well. Then I’m going to need details, so going to need to talk to the JCS, most likely get a security brief and status brief and probably get on the horn to various allies (NATO treaties would be in effect, as would a host of other mutual defense treaties) and other concerned or involved governments. I’d be surprised if, having launched a nuclear strike on the US if someone else hadn’t already hit the North Koreans back. Assuming I could confirm the details and confirm another attack in progress then I’d order a counter strike on all known North Korean nuclear weapons targets, then broaden that to all North Korean military installations and probably have the military start targeting all C&C and logistics areas including rail roads, bridges, interstate interchanges and anything else. Then need to get an emergency session of the UN going to start discussing what will become of North Korea after we wipe out their government and how quickly any surviving officials can be tried in international courts and hung from the rafters.
They have interstates in North Korea???
Sure. There is a major road network that links Pyongyang to basically the rest of the country, and they use it to transport military and other logistics. True, they use their rail system more (they have chronic fuel shortages which limit truck and car traffic, though not for the military obviously since they get the lions share), but then we’d be hitting that as well.
It actually wouldn’t take that much to push North Korea over the edge, since their system is so fragile and they are so close to the edge even in the best of times. Destroy basically their infrastructure, especially at key points and their whole country would be on the brink. It would be managing the humanitarian crisis more than the military challenges which makes the prospect so horrific. But if they nuked a US city? Well, all bets would be off at that point.
I’d take a deep look around for Ashton Kutcher who is clearly trying to revive his flagging career by “Punk’d”-ing me, since there is no way that North Korea could deliver a nuclear weapon large enough and with such range and precision to destroy Washington D.C.
Stranger
You are fighting the hypothetical. 
Yeah, they don’t really have the means of hitting much in the US beyond perhaps some targets on the west coast…and that’s assuming they have managed to miniaturize a warhead that will go on one of their (failure prone) long range missiles and get it to the general area.
I’m fairly certain the JCS has a catalog of options (both nuclear and non-nuclear) already prepared for use against the DPNK. What I think a lot of the Bomb Them Back To The Stone Age advocates don’t understand is that since their famed Pyongyang subway system is 100 meters (meters, not feet) underground, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they have military stores and personnel in other places buried just as deeply. And we may not have any even nuclear bunker busting munitions that could penetrate that deeply underground.
So you quickly have yourself sworn in and consult with your military and intelligence advisors. It seems that the NK navy managed to buy a few ballistic missile submarines from the former soviet union as they fell that nobody knew about. It is believed that it has taken them this long to create missiles that will work from inside the subs which is why they have not attacked until now. They are not certain how many of these subs the NK has but a u2 flyover of the country has shown that at least one more sub was getting loaded with missiles but that sub cannot be located at this time. NSA intercepted a transmission immediately prior to the launch which is believed to be the final “go” command. Your advisors do not believe that sub commanders have the authority to launch without final go ahead from Kim Jong-Un. Unfortunately nobody has been able to locate him since before the attack and it is believed that he is hiding somewhere in the country possibly among civilian population centers.
Well, fighting the hypothetical here…there is almost zero chance that the North Koreans could A) manage, maintain and crew an old Soviet era boomer, and B) there is no way they could slip a Soviet era boomer out of North Korea and get it into position to launch missiles that would be decades old and that they couldn’t maintain on a target like Washington DC…if they had such a sub and tried to put it to sea, and by some miracle actually got it to sea it would have several US attack boats trailing after it, ready to blow it out of the water if it made a wrong move. It would probably have a South Korean boat in tow as well, and gods know what else…maybe even a Chinese or Russian boat, which would be ironic. Just not going to happen. Oh, and they wouldn’t be able to contact the sub once it was away from North Korea anyway, so if the sub skipper is waiting for confirmation he’d be waiting a long, long time.
It’s just too fantastical (and no mister fox) of a scenario to be plausible.
So the only option is to bomb the shit out of North Korea because they believe there may be more nukes on another sub they can’t find, and they believe the sub commander won’t fire the nukes he might have if we manage to kill the Supreme Leader…who we can’t seem to locate at this time, so we need to destroy every single inch of North Korea, *which cannot help but carry over into massive destruction of parts of South Korea. By the way, this plan can’t work. There is no way for our missiles to get there before he can get an order to that second sub commander.
Implement Plan R
I could buy a smuggled North Korean nuke, but not a ballistic missile sub. Change your hypothetical to “They put the nuke on a tramp steamer with a suicide crew, sailed up the Potomac, and Blowie!”
I mean, in this hypothetical there could be more smuggled nukes, so you still have the ticking time bomb scenario.
I don’t know how invading Norway will help but I guess that’s why you’re secretary of agriculture and not secretary of defense.
Ok fine have it your way.
They bought the ELF system that was dismantled in 2004.