Makes me wonder if I should get the hell out of New York.
Seriously, if someone decides to nuke the US, where would they start? Almost certainly Washington DC and NYC. The US is too big to bomb in its entirety.
Maybe I should move to Boise, Idaho or something. I don't think they're going to get bombed, and it seems nice.
You won't want to live anywhere after nukes start flying. Even if your location isn't hit directly, you're dealing with a complete collapse of society as we know it. Not to mention things like nuclear winter.
> The US is too big to bomb in its entirety.
Russia has ~5500 warheads, so maybe not every square inch but certainly several cities and other locations in each state.
> if someone decides to nuke the US, where would they start?
First, nuclear forces: ICBM and IRBM silos and their C2, nuclear weapons storage, strategic airfields and ballistic-missile submarine bases. (This is why nuclear arsenals escalate against each other. The defensive role of missile silos is both deference and to soak up the enemy’s nukes.)
Second, leadership: command posts and communication.
Third, other military: barracks, supply depots, marshalling points, airfields, ammunition storage, tank and vehicle storage.
Fourth, military industry: ammo, tank, APC factories; refineries; railyards and repair facilities. Steel, aluminum and power generation.
Fifth, population centres. (You don’t want to nuke New York if that could have taken out a silo that will flatten a dozen of your cities.)
In summary, somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere :).
Nuking full siloes is the point of a first strike. So yes, you’re relatively safe near a silo field if America is launching first and the adversary assumes or knows that every silo launched perfectly.
> they aren’t particularly high on this list of targets
The target list is obviously conditional on a nuclear war happening. Unless your position is the U.S. is invulnerable to a first strike, then the silos should stay at the top of the list. (Even in a second strike you hit them and hit them fast. If there was a launch error you get a tremendous defensive ROI in taking them out.)
> My position is first strikes vs US, Russia, or China are almost completely useless
That’s incoherent with this thread, which started with someone asking what would happen “if someone decides to nuke the US.” Not if France launched a suicidal first strike on America.
The realistic scenarios for America getting nuked are a first strike from a rogue state, first strike from Russia or China, and second strike from Russia or China.
First strike from a rogue state is basically nuclear terrorism; it will probably target a population centre or something close and hittable, e.g. Guam for Pyongyang. First strikes from Russia or China would target silos. (Unless theatre-based, e.g. hitting Guam and our Japanese airbases ahead of an invasion of Taiwan.) Second strike would mean silos are probably empty, though not necessarily, these are hundreds of decades-old mechanisms in who knows what condition of readiness, but sure, if the American first strike is comprehensive and flawless, and the enemy omnipotent, we’d probably not see too many nukes go at silos. (You would at other nuclear infrastructure.)
So in general, no, if we’re in wide-scale nuclear war the planners who thought about this for decades in the Cold War may not have missed that launched tubes that have launched are now empty.
> First strike from a rogue state is basically nuclear terrorism
Obviously by definition someone can attack first, however:
“First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing side is left unable to continue war.”
So yes in theory sure a first strike would take out nuclear silos, but neither side believed they could preform a successful first strike. It’s a theoretical goal, not something that seems to have been possible barring the very early days of the Cold War before ICBM’s existed.
Which then brings up the question of what exactly you target if you assume thousands of nukes will hit you regardless of what you aim for.
The B part of ICBM means ballistic, and they are. Thus you can get a useful approximation of where it’s going to land based on the initial trajectory.
By useful I mean you can do significantly better than saying if it’s targeting the middle of the US, east, or west coast. Though it’s quite a large area.
And they have to assume you will assume this, so they would expect your silos will already be emptied in a retaliatory strike. Of course you have to trust early-warning systems and the ability to react decisively and quickly.
I know you're half joking but if someone were to give an honest answer i think you need to take into consideration resources in the region, water supply, rivers that could carry radioactive material and so on. I would assume (they) would've already thought about this kind of thing where you would map what's the most damaging areas to nuke that would affect the most area.
Grim times ahead for sure but i'm not that stressed considering that something like 70% of russia's population is in the west of the country, very, very close to europe
I don't think it's super likely, though if our president decides to declare war to try reignite American imperialism, then it seems like it could happen.
He's already talked about invading Greenland, what's to stop him from trying to invade somewhere else, somewhere with more firepower to fight back? All it would take is Fox News or OAN to start running stories about how the US is actually entitled to the land of France. It's not like it matters if there's any truth to it.
Is it? I mean I don't think they could legally refuse (if use of force was authorized by the president and congress)? So it would still effectively be a military "coup" and those can obviously still happen in authoritarian countries.
I sometimes heard vague theories of rich people on the east coast having their jets ready to fly to New Zealand, but I'm not sure how realistic that would be in such a scenario.
New Yorker here. Last year one of my meditation teachers here in the city casually mentioned that in some sects of Tibetan Buddhism there's a prophecy of some sort of catastrophic global event between 2026 and 2032, and a former monk friend of his advised him to leave NYC by 2030. From some casual googling it seems like the text is "The Light That Makes Things Clear: A Prophecy of Things to Come".
I'm a non-believer when it comes to these sorts of things, but if anything was to convince me otherwise it'd be watching Trump speed run us towards another World War these past few weeks.
My personal 'unknown wisdom' conspiracy is that there's some knowledge about UAPs which is why politicians are being so weird. Rubio/Vance going from calling Trump a nazi to joining him. I know it's just they're shitty people, but part of me would rather it's some secret UAP knowledge.
And what UAP has with Trump? Remember US is going crazy others Democratic countries aren't and russia is being russia, don't confuse USA going downhill because of their shit politics as the world is going under, cold war was a lot worse
Well he has talked repeatedly about taking Greenland "by force", which in itself wouldn't be a world war, but of course is still terrible.
I think the concern is that telling Ukraine to surrender their land after they were invaded by Russia will give Russia the confidence to start attacking other European countries. Traditionally, NATO would have protected us from that happening, but with Trump upsetting all our NATO partners, I'm kind of concerned that that won't help this time.
This, basically. He's said that we're going to take Greenland one way or another, is talking about taking the Panama Canal, is basically telling Russia we're on their side and Europe can deal with it themselves, and China is ramping up activities around taking Taiwan [1]. He's also classified the cartels as terrorist organizations and has talked about sending in elite US forces to take them out, which Mexico has said they would view as a violation of their sovereignty.
I've been listening to a lot of French news lately and France is already talking about needing to build more nuclear weapons and to extend nuclear protections across Europe, as the US has in a short few weeks completely alienated all of our allies from the past 80 years [2].
So, I don't know, seems like we're closer to everything going to shit globally than in any other time in my 40+ years.
Well, this is how yout tell anynone feeling like fixing like they might be in a position of fixing old grudges or grabbing some land - go for it! :P Not very safe and can get out of hand very very quickly...
The patriot missiles have been quite effective at taking out Russian missiles. I'd wait till that stuff happens before packing up and driving west. Typing this from central London which also gets Russian threats.
I think it's unlikely the Russians would nuke somewhere like that as they only have two decent cities which would be hit in retaliation. It's more likely if they went nuclear that they'd hit troops in Ukraine. Biden issued a lot of threats to Putin if they did that but under Trump I'm not sure much US retaliation would happen.
Seriously, if someone decides to nuke the US, where would they start? Almost certainly Washington DC and NYC. The US is too big to bomb in its entirety.
Maybe I should move to Boise, Idaho or something. I don't think they're going to get bombed, and it seems nice.