Articles: "Nuclear Warfare 101".

[Stuart]

Note to above.

Figures for the Chinese nuclear arsemal differ radically between sources. Some put the total number of Chinese nuclear devices at below 200 which would mean no tactical nukes at all and that most of their long-range missiles have explosive warheads. There's a lot of quiet debate about that; not helped by the Chinese habit of every ministry involved giving different figures.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, now, Stuart, I'm sure the fine minds of Brazil could manage an adding machine...

Hmm. I wonder. A hand-cranked one perhaps... Anything more than that, well, I wouldn't trust the product. It might explain how their nuclear industry got so screwed up though.

I meant a hand-cranked one. Not necessarily something as compact as a Curta, and certainly not on a first try; from what I've heard, those things were so complicated that they required special jigs made in, yes, Germany to hold all the gears in place while assembling the things. But something. I mean, as long as you don't lose the ability to manufacture gears (which I suspect Brazil is up to, even from domestic resources; machined gears are 19th century technology), you can make your own adding machines.

Anything electric would have to rely on vacuum tubes; I'm willing to believe that if Brazil has the raw materials they could build tubes... eventually.

It's quite possible, of course, that the investment of skilled labor it would take them to build a mechanical adding machine, let alone an electromechanical one, would not be cost-effective compared to hiring a battery of little old ladies with abacuses to do the same calculations...

[Stuart]

It's quite possible, of course, that the investment of skilled labor it would take them to build a mechanical adding machine, let alone an electromechanical one, would not be cost-effective compared to hiring a battery of little old ladies with abacuses to do the same calculations...

Funny you should mention that First place I worked at, we had a room full of ladies who did nothing but calculations all day (actually they were flow movement calculations for water over the hull on ships. The project I was working on was a silicone-based anti-fouling paint and we needed flow calculations to work out stripping rates). Only, they weren't little old ladies, they were extremely nubile young ladies. Remember in that day and age, a British civil servant had a job for life with a guaranteed pension at the end of it. By the standards of the time that meant one was considered excellent husband material by the hottest chicks around. All the ladies in the calculating room were chasing husbands and we were very seriously warned never to go into that room alone. We always went there in pairs at least and more usually in groups of three or four.

Sad little coda to that story. One of my bosses there was a PRO called Davidson (I never knew his first name, it was surnames only there). He hated his job, hated the civil service, hated the ARE and hated pretty much everything to do with his life there - and had done for forty years. He only hung on so he could get his pension. Eventually he retired - and dropped dead of a heart attack three weeks later. There's a moral there.

[aerius]

Anything electric would have to rely on vacuum tubes; I'm willing to believe that if Brazil has the raw materials they could build tubes... eventually.

It would be a very long time before they got that far, vacuum tubes require specialty glass where the co-efficient of thermal expansion is matched to the metal pins & electrodes so that the tubes can hold a vacuum. Furthermore, the glass has to have limited secondary emissions from electron bombardment and it also requires specific insulating and electrical properties. Oh yeah, and lots of specialized equipment and precision machine tools to make the internal parts to the required tolerances. A tour of the RCA tube factory gives an idea of what's involved.

[Seggybop]

Anything electric would have to rely on vacuum tubes; I'm willing to believe that if Brazil has the raw materials they could build tubes... eventually.

It's a lot easier to make rudimentary diodes/transistors out of raw materials than vacuum tubes. They should at least be able to build low quantities of basic electronics by hand, not that it really changes the overall situation at all. It certainly wouldn't help them keep their current gear running any longer, but they ought to be able to manage radio and (extremely large) calculators and eventually work up from something resembling a 1950s level.

[Stuart]

It's a lot easier to make rudimentary diodes/transistors out of raw materials than vacuum tubes. They should at least be able to build low quantities of basic electronics by hand, not that it really changes the overall situation at all. It certainly wouldn't help them keep their current gear running any longer, but they ought to be able to manage radio and (extremely large) calculators and eventually work up from something resembling a 1950s level.

The key word there is "eventually". The problem is that countries haven't got that long. Their economy and society is going down the crapper all the time and they are, very literally, running against the clock. There is so much that needs to be done and so few resources left to do it that some very hard decisions have to be taken over where priorities have to be applied. The question keeps coming up; 'it'll be very nice if we have that, but we absolutely have to have this. Therefore that goes to the scrap heap while this stays.' It's also likely that development (or regression) would be very uneven. Some places would keep a reasonable standard of living while others would drop steadily into true barbarism. As I said, we can argue whether humanity would drop back two centuries or four but to some extent that's a false argument because the two are not mutually exclusive.

Very simple example of the problems. How many people here, now, without looking it up, can really design a horse-drawn plow (including all the accoutrements that are needed to make it work? All of you who put your hands up, congratulations. You're the new aristocracy.

[Simon_Jester]

It's quite possible, of course, that the investment of skilled labor it would take them to build a mechanical adding machine, let alone an electromechanical one, would not be cost-effective compared to hiring a battery of little old ladies with abacuses to do the same calculations...

Funny you should mention that . First place I worked at, we had a room full of ladies who did nothing but calculations all day (actually they were flow movement calculations for water over the hull on ships. The project I was working on was a silicone-based anti-fouling paint and we needed flow calculations to work out stripping rates). Only, they weren't little old ladies, they were extremely nubile young ladies...

A very relevant point. It seems to me that this is mostly a question of what the government payroll budget looks like. I suspect that the Brazilian civil service post-WWIII won't give its employees terms as favorable as the British civil service post-WWII. Thus the draw of marrying civil servants declines.

As a consequence, the Government may not be able to afford extremely nubile young ladies and be forced to settle for little old ladies instead. On the bright side, post-apocalyptic Brazilian civil servants will be able to go into the computer room alone in safety...

Sad little coda to that story. One of my bosses there was a PRO called Davidson (I never knew his first name, it was surnames only there). He hated his job, hated the civil service, hated the ARE and hated pretty much everything to do with his life there - and had done for forty years. He only hung on so he could get his pension. Eventually he retired - and dropped dead of a heart attack three weeks later. There's a moral there.

[takes note]
Duly noted. Thank you, sir.

[bz249]

I meant a hand-cranked one. Not necessarily something as compact as a Curta, and certainly not on a first try; from what I've heard, those things were so complicated that they required special jigs made in, yes, Germany to hold all the gears in place while assembling the things. But something. I mean, as long as you don't lose the ability to manufacture gears (which I suspect Brazil is up to, even from domestic resources; machined gears are 19th century technology), you can make your own adding machines.

Anything electric would have to rely on vacuum tubes; I'm willing to believe that if Brazil has the raw materials they could build tubes... eventually.

It's quite possible, of course, that the investment of skilled labor it would take them to build a mechanical adding machine, let alone an electromechanical one, would not be cost-effective compared to hiring a battery of little old ladies with abacuses to do the same calculations...

Producing semiconductors is not that hard, it is technology from the 50s afterall. The real question is whether a Third World Would Be Superpower can afford diverting resources into that when they are struggling to reestablish a functioning society and economy.

From the discussion I understood that even Brazil would get a few package just for the fun in case of a global nuclear exchange, which means the most important transportation hubs are gone and I guess that finding alternative routes is not so easy in typical developing country.

And having a good infrastructure is a must, the larger the population(=market) synchronized into one economical unit, the more efficient production methods are viable. And the higher the labor productivity, the more "luxury" (anything above bare survival) stuff can run.

[SilverHawk]

The real problem with fallout though isn't the effect it has directly. That's accommodatable. It's the indirect effect on transportation and communications. Essentiall, fallout plumes are like razor slashes across the face of a country, they divide it up into isolated segments and the damage never quite heals within the lifetime of the victim. Those fallout plumes effectively prevent goods and services getting from one part of the country to another if by doing so, one would have to cross said plume (which is a death sentence for several years). It's this discombobulation of a society that causes most of the problems. Again, we come back to how interconnected everything is. For example, it's really sad if an iron ore mine is on one side of a fallout plume and a steel plant is on the other. That makes both effectively useless. Australia is peculiarly vulnerable to this sort of thing because of its geography.

Razor slashes that last 21 days before they lose 90% of their potentecy that would allow limited travel across it assuming no fouling from additional explosions nearby and their fresh fallout plumes. It's not the end of the world by a long shot, but losing services for effectively a month is still a big deal.

[Pelranius]

I wonder if there was any profit motive behind nuking the second and third tier countries? For instance, America or Russia (China and Israel to a lesser extent) could swoop in and offer to sell a functioning ABM set to Brazil or South Africa which should theoretically stop the several nukes thrown in its direction during a global nuclear exchange. Though of course a few ABM batteries aren't a cure for riding out the storm, but it's better than nothing.

[PeZook]

All the ladies in the calculating room were chasing husbands and we were very seriously warned never to go into that room alone. We always went there in pairs at least and more usually in groups of three or four.

Okay, I have to ask...

Why?

[Stuart]

Razor slashes that last 21 days before they lose 90% of their potentecy that would allow limited travel across it assuming no fouling from additional explosions nearby and their fresh fallout plumes. It's not the end of the world by a long shot, but losing services for effectively a month is still a big deal.

There's a few additional problems there, mostly depending on the type of burst. If ground bursts are used (all three devices initiated in the Australian study were ground bursts) the radiation plume from the initiations is intense. It does indeed decline by 90 percent in the first month or so (depending on a few other factors) but even the 10 percent residual is enough to worry about on prolonged exposure. It's a classic reverse exponential decline; the initial fall in radiation dose is great but once that's past, the residual declines at progressively slower rates. So that residual (like the scars from the razor slash analogy) will be around for some time. Another problem is hot spots. These are areas where the radiation dose is way above the average. Hot spots seem to occur where two or more inititiations interact. They're particularly nasty because there is usually no clue that they are there. So, one can be walking along and put one's foot in one and not know it - until one starts dying.

The general effect will be that the fall-out plumes will be closed to everybody until they have been properly mapped and explored. Once that's done, they can be opened up. The usual estimate is that they will be more or less safe within a year and pretty much pre-attack level within five years - except for the hotspots.

I wonder if there was any profit motive behind nuking the second and third tier countries? For instance, America or Russia (China and Israel to a lesser extent) could swoop in and offer to sell a functioning ABM set to Brazil or South Africa which should theoretically stop the several nukes thrown in its direction during a global nuclear exchange. Though of course a few ABM batteries aren't a cure for riding out the storm, but it's better than nothing.

It's certainly a good sales tool. Another point is that with nuclear arsenals beings shrunk, it suddenly becomes much easier to stop a fully-fledged nuclear attack. When there's 5,000 warheads coming in, stopping them is very hard. When that number drops to 1,000 it becomes much easier. If somebody gets a first strike in and faces only a ragged counter-volley of the survivors from that thousand, stopping the attack becomes easier still. In a very real sense, "reducing nuclear arsenals" means "making a first strike option more feasible".

The possibility that countries may face a limited nuclear attack (in the sense that its limited by the attacker having only a few nuclear weapons) is one of the drivers behind the fact that so many are developing or procuring ABM systems. There are other drivers as well but that's an important one.

Okay, I have to ask... Why?

Because of the danger of being carried off and forcibly married? Seriously, remember the culture of the times. If a couple were going out regularly, there was tremendous social pressure on them to get married. If there were rumors that they'd "done it". that social pressure pretty much became an imperative. Therefore, if rumors started to spread that a couple were "interested" it was the start of a process that usually ended up in one place - and husband-hunting women were very prone to starting such rumors. So, all the unmarried men (and quite a few married ones) went into the computing room in groups; it avoided such problems.

That kind of environment (which didn't die out until the mid-1970s) had a lot of odd side effects. One of them was that there was a lot more adultery back in those days. Seriously. Remember "the pill" was only just making it out of the laboratory and divorce was still very difficult. The latter meant that people put up with more philandering simply because divorce was difficult and very expensive. Also, the lack of easily accessible and inexpensive contraception (not to mention a zero chance of a legal abortion) meant pregnancy was a serious risk. A woman who got pregnant outside marriage was a social outcast and her chances of finding a husband were vastly reduced (to practically zero) So, unmarried women were mostly inaccessible because they were "saving themselves for marriage". A married woman who got pregnant from a lover could simply slip it in on her husband (there was a study done in Crawley - small town in the UK - that took a look at blood groups with the aim of improving blood transfusion success rates. The results were immediately concealed because they showed that 25 percent of the children could not possibly be the offspring of both their putative parents. Since there was no doubt about who the mother was . . . . . ) So, while unmarried women were mostly out of the running, married women weren't. They were experienced and might be a lot more available than one might think. Go back to television series made in the early 1960s and the phenomena is quite striking. Looking back on those days half a century later, they weren't actually very healthy times.

[Simon_Jester]

It's certainly a good sales tool. Another point is that with nuclear arsenals beings shrunk, it suddenly becomes much easier to stop a fully-fledged nuclear attack. When there's 5,000 warheads coming in, stopping them is very hard. When that number drops to 1,000 it becomes much easier. If somebody gets a first strike in and faces only a ragged counter-volley of the survivors from that thousand, stopping the attack becomes easier still. In a very real sense, "reducing nuclear arsenals" means "making a first strike option more feasible".

In mitigation of this, or at least this is my impression, people tend to cut the warheads that are most vulnerable to a first strike first. Though I could easily be wrong about this; SLBMs are very resistant to first strikes, but given what you've said over the past year I'm hardly confident that bombers are less resistant than ICBMs, and I'm not sure which of those two legs of the triad gets reduced the most in arms reduction.

[Kane Starkiller]

Thanks for the info in Chinese capabilities Stuart.
If I can bother you further say that there is a crisis over Taiwan and China feels that US strike is inevitable and decides to launch its long range missiles at US west coast.
Say that US intercepts a good number of missiles but Los Angeles goes up in flames (or whatever Chinese would target).
Could you elaborate more specifically what US response would look like? Would they obliterate all powerplants, major factories, ports etc. in China?
How would US execute the strike: with B-2 bombers or B-52s or Tridents or Minutemans or all of the above?

[Kane Starkiller]

EDIT: By the way roughly how far apart can the targets be for warheads launched from the same missile to be able to hit them? For example I don't think warheads launched from the same missiles can hit both Shanghai and Beijing. Or am I wrong?

[SVPD]

I'm quite sure that the figures for the maximum ground spread (I don't know the official term) for MIRV warheads of any operational missile is highly classified.

[Simon_Jester]

That said, there have to be limits; they can't classify the laws of ballistics.

We know that MIRVs open up and separate the reentry vehicles fairly close to the target (making optimistic assumptions, say, a few hundred miles?) We know that while they must surely have independent engines to spread them out and direct them to their targets, those engines can't possibly be powerful enough to impart the kind of velocity the main ICBM booster does. So even within those constraints, they have to fly on more or less parallel trajectories- maybe a few dozen miles of separation in a few hundred, and that's being (I feel) optimistic.

So hitting Beijing and Shanghai with the same MIRV is right out, unless the MIRV bus separates almost immediately after burnout of the main engine.

[Pelranius]

It's better to just assign said Minuteman or Trident missile to hit multiple targets in Shanghai or Beijing instead of mixing up warheads from each missile. That way if something goes wrong with one of the missiles, it's less complications to fire up a follow up attack with another missile or by bomber.

Incidentally, the whole purpose of the Chinese nuclear arsenal is to not use it. If they have to fire it off, China has lost already, to quote a China-watcher on another forum.

[Pelranius]

I just thought of an intriguing aside. Could one combatant nation in a nuclear exchange freeload off of it's opponent's larger nuclear arsenal? Say that China could expand all its ICBMs at America and trust us to deal with far off southern hemisphere states like Australia, Brazil and South Africa, since it follows that the America nuclear arsenal is larger and more capable that the Second Artillery?

I was just thinking about that while wondering if the DF-41 ICBM (assuming that the thing exists, all I've seen is an all terrain TEL vehicle that could easily be used for the DF-31As, no photographic proof of the DF-41 itself) would have a range of 12,000km or 16,000km. 12,000km should be sufficient to mess America up, but it might not be enough for Brazil or Argentina.

[Simon_Jester]

I just thought of an intriguing aside. Could one combatant nation in a nuclear exchange freeload off of it's opponent's larger nuclear arsenal? Say that China could expand all its ICBMs at America and trust us to deal with far off southern hemisphere states like Australia, Brazil and South Africa, since it follows that the America nuclear arsenal is larger and more capable that the Second Artillery?

We probably wouldn't nuke most of those states, because they are (to varying extents) our allies. It would be to our advantage in a nuclear war if Australia was not nuked at all; we would be both fools and contemptible betrayers to do it ourselves.

The logic of launching nuclear strikes on potential competitors in a nuclear war only applies if you fear competition from those states in the aftermath enough to justify earning the undying hatred of those states in the long run.

[Dave]

Aha, I hear you say what about the mad dictator? Its interesting to note that mad, homicidal aggressive dictators tend to get very tame sane cautious ones as soon as they split atoms. Whatever their motivations and intents, the mechanics of how nuclear weapons work dictate that mad dictators become sane dictators very quickly.

So, if this is the case, why are we worried about Iran gaining nuclear weapons? If that means they'll realize that they need to behave like grownups, isn't that for the better?

Or are we worried that they will not realize that, and use a nuclear weapon? (which results in an escalating exchange)

[Pelranius]

We probably wouldn't nuke most of those states, because they are (to varying extents) our allies. It would be to our advantage in a nuclear war if Australia was not nuked at all; we would be both fools and contemptible betrayers to do it ourselves.

The logic of launching nuclear strikes on potential competitors in a nuclear war only applies if you fear competition from those states in the aftermath enough to justify earning the undying hatred of those states in the long run.

I just can't think of too many states we (or pretty much anyone else) want fear enough to nuke if the rationale for nuking third parties is that one feared competition from them. For instance, if we got nuked by say Russia, most of the rogue states are such jokes that I really wouldn't shoot more than a few dozen warheads at each, if at all, and nuking another nuclear power like China would just bring more nuclear retaliation down on one's head.

[adam_grif]

So, if this is the case, why are we worried about Iran gaining nuclear weapons? If that means they'll realize that they need to behave like grownups, isn't that for the better?

Or are we worried that they will not realize that, and use a nuclear weapon? (which results in an escalating exchange

It also severely limits the strategic options we have for dealing with Iran. It means we can't dick them around as much, or if it came to that, can't invade them (for whatever reason). However, there is also a depressingly large number of people who genuinely do think that countries getting nuclear weapons means they're going to use them and that it creates dangerous situations. Really, it would create more of an inconvenient situation than a dangerous one, but public perception is important in policy making too.

[Simon_Jester]

Aha, I hear you say what about the mad dictator? Its interesting to note that mad, homicidal aggressive dictators tend to get very tame sane cautious ones as soon as they split atoms. Whatever their motivations and intents, the mechanics of how nuclear weapons work dictate that mad dictators become sane dictators very quickly.

So, if this is the case, why are we worried about Iran gaining nuclear weapons? If that means they'll realize that they need to behave like grownups, isn't that for the better?

Or are we worried that they will not realize that, and use a nuclear weapon? (which results in an escalating exchange)

It occurs to me that much of the "mad" behavior we see from dictatorial regimes is liable to be a product of insecurity. Not in the sense of the dictator needing a hug (though that would be hilarious), but in terms of the dictator realizing that he shares a planet with nations that can turn it (and him, personally) into ash on about three hours' notice.

At the same time, though, he can't afford to walk too small on the political front without jeopardizing his own political position. So he puffs, he postures, he screams about how vile his enemies are. Things that will make him look tough to his own people, but that will not risk provoking war against the nuclear powers. And to the West, because we don't share his political imperatives, he looks completely mad.

Then he gets his nuclear arsenal. Suddenly, he does not need to be afraid. Sure, there are still powers out there that could wreck his country, but not without significant cost to ourselves. Today, we might be willing to attack Iran if they made us angry enough, but we'd think long and hard before starting an aggressive war against Iran if we knew that we'd be trading, say, London for destroying the regime.

Once you have that security guarantee, your country no longer needs to fear the nuclear powers the same way, because while they can still destroy you the threat isn't as utterly asymmetric as it was. Which lets you get away with less posturing and stupidity, though that's still an option if you're North Korea.

I just can't think of too many states we (or pretty much anyone else) want fear enough to nuke if the rationale for nuking third parties is that one feared competition from them. For instance, if we got nuked by say Russia, most of the rogue states are such jokes that I really wouldn't shoot more than a few dozen warheads at each, if at all, and nuking another nuclear power like China would just bring more nuclear retaliation down on one's head.

Exactly. This is, to my way of thinking, one ambiguity in Stuart's analysis, at least as written so far.

If you're fighting a general nuclear war against a mix of nuclear and non-nuclear states, it makes sense to drop some bombs on the enemy's non-nuclear states simply to prevent them from becoming a threat in the postwar environment. If China and the US fight a nuclear exchange and Australia is left untouched, Australia may try to do some of the same things to nuked-China that the US would have done anyway, and succeed because China is so badly weakened. So China wants to knock Australia back badly enough that they're out of play in the postwar world, too busy patching themselves back together to make trouble.

But it makes little or no sense for a friendly or neutral nuclear power to do the same thing to a potential rival; among other things, that nation is a potential source of aid and support in the postwar environment, when your nation needs all the help it can get trying to find food that isn't infested with radioactive cockroaches.*

*Yes, I know, cockroaches do not have exceptional radiation resistance. That just means that the food is infested with dead radioactive cockroaches...

[Stuart]

If I can bother you further say that there is a crisis over Taiwan and China feels that US strike is inevitable and decides to launch its long range missiles at US west coast. Say that US intercepts a good number of missiles but Los Angeles goes up in flames (or whatever Chinese would target). Could you elaborate more specifically what US response would look like? Would they obliterate all powerplants, major factories, ports etc. in China? How would US execute the strike: with B-2 bombers or B-52s or Tridents or Minutemans or all of the above?

Until very recently, the answer was "all of the above until the rubble bounced." Now, with the jackass we've got in the White House, I honestly don't know. Nor does anybody else and that's very, very dangerous. It might tempt somebody to make a guess.

EDIT: By the way roughly how far apart can the targets be for warheads launched from the same missile to be able to hit them? For example I don't think warheads launched from the same missiles can hit both Shanghai and Beijing. Or am I wrong?

Warheads from an MRV or MIRV bus fall inside a footprint that's determined by a lot of factors. MRV busses traditionally had a maximum footprint that was about 10 - 15 miles across so the most extensive case was an equilateral triangle with the initiation points at the apexs and the sides 10 - 15 miles long. MRVs were aimed at individual targets. With MIRVs, the footprint is larger but how much larger is something that is kept very quiet.

This is actually an MIRV coming in. Trace the lines back and you'll see how low the release point really is.



(sorry the picture is a bit big but I thought you'd prefer the sight in all its glory rather than dumbed down.)