What you said you would do, order a full retaliatory strike, is much much different in scale than what the Allies did in WW2. If you have misinterpreted what you would do, or if I have mistaken what you would have done, then correct me. But from what I gather, you seem like you’d find it more important to prove your POTUS credentials than minimize casualties. For example, like I said, I personally would not fully retaliate, leaving nukes only for the capital city and probably some important weapon cities. I’d go with a conventional strike to cripple as much of their capabilities as possible
Again, where are you getting your calculations from? How do you know that “a lot”, if any, nukes will be shot down, fail, or be destroyed on the ground?
I thought you were Christian? You’d doom most of the globe to a slow death from nuclear winter?
And you mistake the point I’m trying to make. I didn’t say humanity wouldn’t survive, but I question that such a near-extinction event is BETTER than being under a totalitarian state. Why do you think it’s BETTER that humanity start over than simply submit to such a ruler for a few decades?
Is your contention that if the US is destroyed, no other country in the world nor in the FUTURE history of the world will be capable of overthrowing the regime that destroyed it? And that you’re so sure of that you’d be willing to bet most of the human race on it in the form of a catastrophic nuclear strike?
It will be the destruction of civilization because the amount of nukes the US and Russia has is enough to darken the skies of the planet for years and spread radiation to all corners of the globe. If the Soviets continue to bomb us it will STILL be less suffering than if we threw dozens, hundreds, or thousands of nukes at them in retaliation. I’m not saying give up, but I’m saying that a full nuclear retaliation is insane and would help no one.
I would not mass slaughter civilians for the sake of revenge obviously but I would target their military bases, oil reserves, industrial centres, and so on to cripple them.
Because the first target of the nukes will be other nukes.
Humanity does not have to start over. If we don’t retalitate the USSR isn’t going to stop until unconditional surrender or until everyone’s dead. A retaliation would really be self-defence.
No see above,.
I am not advocating one in the sense of wiping out the USSR’s population.
Even if the military base is in the middle of nowhere with the nearest village being two hundred miles away?
Assuming it is the Cold War style full scale launch, I will order firing everything we’ve got–launch the bombers, fire all silos, anything at sea, and the few we probably snuck into space at some point. When Loki leads the frost giants across the Bifrost Bridge, I shall meet them in the middle,
*
…singing and crying…Val-hall-a I am coming…*
Or, for those that don’t speak Zeppelin, Rooster Cogburn: * Fill yore hand, you sonuvabitch!*
Or, for those that are Klingon,
KA-PLAH! Today is a good day to die.
Yeah, that whole turning the other cheek thing? Doesn’t work for me.
I was clear that there wouldn’t be one third of the world population surviving, I’m saying at a minimum 1/3rd of the US population would survive, more likely double that. That’s just from the initial strike - many more would die from complications of civilization collapsing. But part of that is how well the country is able to be protected from further attack, organize relief efforts, etc.
But let’s say it is one third. You’re essentially saying welp - those 100 million survivng Americans, you’re fucked. I’m going to let the attackers have a field day with you. They can do some recon and figure out which parts of the country are least hurt, where you guys are congregating to form shelters and distribute food, and then I’ll let them go ahead and bomb and even nuke those places. Oh, and future victims of a country that has shown itself willing to murder hundreds of millions of people unprovoked - you’re fucked too. Sorry, I’m just not willing to disable their ability to fight. But I’m going to pat myself on the back and tell myself how noble and humane I am for refusing to do it.
Tell me, then - if the only point of nuclear weapons is to “mass slaughter civilians”, why is it that over the years the yields on nuclear weapons has dramatically decreased even though our ability to build heavier rockets has increased?
No one besides Stranger on a train has any clue what nuclear weapons are capable of or what the actual strategies involved would be, yet you’re so authoratatively willing to set the terms of the debate by throwing around this nonsense.
Yes, two hundred miles is nothing to an ICBM, and you aren’t going to find a military base that far from a civilian population anyway. You don’t need nukes to bomb a military base, and you would not be protecting anybody from anything anyway.
So basically, you’re just admitting that you lack any moral center and would mass slaughter innocents just for spite. Apparently you believe this kind of posturing resembles machismo. It actually indicates just the opposite.
The explosion is going to cause a 200 mile wide zone of destruction now? What sort of yield do you need to achieve that?
Military bases include nuclear launch facilities - why wouldn’t you use nukes on them? Silos are hardened, difficult targets. The defenses against conventional weapons are considerable. The fastest conventional attack will be far slower than the nuclear attacks.
You’ve managed to cram nothing but wrong into this post. You probably meant that a 200 mile flight is nothing to an ICBM, but that doesn’t make any sense - he was clearly giving an example of nuking a military base 200 miles away from a major population center. So you either made that mistake or you think nuclear warheads create swaths of destruction with a 200 mile radius.
Then you say you don’t need nukes to take out a potentially nuke-launching facility, because you can show up 20 hours later with some conventional bombers that will probably be shot down long before their reach their target, after their target launches their nukes, and would be largely ineffective against the hardened targets anyway.
Then you assert that you wouldn’t be protecting anyone from anything anyway - apparently striking and eliminating a nuclear launching facility has no protective effects.
So we designed our nuclear arsenal - the most critical part of our entire national defense and military - in such a way to please the contractors? And … additionally, for some unspecified reason, building nuclear weapons with smaller yields, which are less destructive… somehow ends up giving the contractors more money? Maybe explain this one a bit instead of just being like UH MAN IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY MANNNNN
Shooting nukes at me for no damn reason makes me a little cranky. Not real happy about an unprovoked attack that will destroy my country, and murder millions of innocents. And then there’s that whole oath of office/duty to country/CIC thing. Firing back is the only acceptable choice in my world. If you disagree, I suggest you do not vote for me for POTUS.
Would need more info. Probably send every nuke we had, first to the offending country and then to all known allies. But how many nukes are en route? And how did we miss this?
An unprovoked attack is another matter. Its not like a country bombed us in defense. Not knowing what was next, id be forced to retaliate tenfold. That being said, if I were leader of a smaller and weaker nation, I may throw up a white flag if I thought it was a viable action…I’m not the type to condone hiroshima. Or dresden.
There’s no way we could miss that one, though. Our intelligence, satellites and allies are just too great. I hope.
Innocents? Hardly. They are the ones with the government that is launching the first strike. They are to blame. Torch them all. Spite doesn’t enter into it at all. They started it, we will end it. Turning the other cheek just means you take it in the neck.
The Soviet Union fell in 1991. Either you are using some wildly outdated history books, or you need to explain why a 15 year old is using an argument that one would expect from someone 30 years old or more.
The most interesting thing is how much it seems to be decided on whether the other people are ‘baddies’ or not.
What if it was a mistake or overreaction rather than outright aggression? Would this change peoples retaliation? With the scenario as stated it doesnt seem to be known how this first strike came about.