What If: Nuclear Bomb detonates in New York City

[PeZook]

This, yes, is a better example.

Honestly, is there any nation whose people DON'T like feeling like the underdog without actually being one? I imagine that, say, Poles would love to be able to feel like the underdog without actually being one, as opposed to being the underdog in reality and getting invaded and conquered from twenty-seven directions at once. Any nation that makes a lot of war movies is likely to portray itself as the good guy.

This is probably true, but whether or not other nations like that, too, is kinda besides this particular point. It does explain why people in this thread can offhandedly propose "Al-Quaeda nuked New York, so we'll fucking nuke whatever country the warhead came from!" as long as its OTHER COUNTRIES that will get nuked, but get into full-blown apologetic mode when Stas posited a scenario where Al-Quaeda got the damn bomb from a radical faction in the US government (oooh that can't happen why do you even propose it?)

Stas just got derailed into minutae about communications and fiction,instead of pressing the issue. Other people dropped it,too, but it is a very interesting question that forces you to examine the policy of destroying cities because they happen to be in the country which produced the nuclear material for the bomb.

Clancy kinda sorta tried to do it in Sum Of All Fears, actually, because the bomb there was made with US material, but of course almighty John Clark figured everything out in like five minutes

So the real question is: why are America's favorite stories about itself war stories?

And I think that's where we can make a point that wouldn't be equally true of any other nation on the face of the Earth: Americans are often uneasy with the idea of "The Man" as an enemy. When an American movie shows the mechanisms of the state or the corporate world as a villain, it's an unusual part of the system, a broken piece- a corrupt policeman, a single corporation that's actually a front operation for an evil mastermind. You don't see very many movies that are based on the premise that the entire domestic political system is corrupt- Hollywood does not produce revolutionary films.

It's not helped by the fact there's a massive media machine on standby, ready to criticize any piece of fition that has an anti-corporatist message as communist subversion (in lighter words).

Remember how Fox slammed the new Muppets movie because it has a rich asshole as the villain?

[K. A. Pital]

Honestly, is there any nation whose people DON'T like feeling like the underdog without actually being one?

Um... Russians? British? None of them seriously wanted to be the Underdog, except they happened to fall into that role once. I can't think of a single techno-thriller written in the Soviet Union (a massive superpower!) that would have the scenario of "They kill us, then we proceed to fuck 'em up with a massive military invasion/special forces/nukes". I can't find many British technothrillers with the Glorious Empire of Never-setting Sun doing the same, likewise. The British are especially relevant. Until the 1940s they had an absolutely massive world-spanning Empire. They are also culturally close to Americans (common cultural background).

Just contrast this with John LeCarre and his gritty ultra-realism of murderous and fucked-in-the-head spies playing games with human lives in an absolutely psychotic fashion. That's the British type of "spy novel", which does not end with Margaret Thatcher ordering a nuclear strike on Tripoli and watching mud people die in agony.

I am deeply disturbed by the Clancy phenomenon, and I can't find an explanation that wouldn't rely on some perverse consequences of an American "empire complex" (the sublime idea or want to be an Empire without being so, an "Empire of Good" if you will; often described by the crude monicker "neoliberal empire"). The thought is deeply disturbing (the British had and still have an Empire complex, just as the Russians, but both of the nations don't really produce many stories about them Teaching 'Em Dastardly Enemies a Lesson).

Perhaps in Russia's case that's a consequence of the deep WWII trauma (we "taught the Nazis a lesson", but the cost was absolutely incredible and nobody really wants to write a novel how you "teach them another lesson" with 30 million of your own citizens dying in horrendous ways). In Britain's case, though, not sure. WWI trauma?

In any case, the scenario is uncommon for British thrillers and/or movies. Yet common for America.

Clancy kinda sorta tried to do it in Sum Of All Fears, actually, because the bomb there was made with US material, but of course almighty John Clark figured everything out in like five minutes

Which is why I'm sort of wondering what happens if the nuke comes from China, Russia or the US itself. There's no "immediately NUKE mud people" option, and so that's a discussion which is more interesting.

What if America can't immediately retaliate? What if doesn't want to, since Russia could obliterate the US if the nukes start flying? Do they really "all fly" in case of a terrorist attack? How would the chain of command behave?

And I thought that participating in this discussion is interesting, since I'm sort of in need of certain answers for my novel about a nuclear ultimatum being issued to world powers; I'm trying to figure out how govenrments much like the ones we have now would behave in this case. But the jerk replies just got me fucking pissed off.

[Aaron MkII]

Is post-apocalyptic fiction big in Russia?

I've read Metro 2033 but the author was obviously making a commentary on society now as opposed to a fallout 3 style...something.

[K. A. Pital]

Fallout is cult, very popular; M2033 is just more or less a Russian version of the same. Other than that, urbantrip flourishes and the combination of urbantrip and abandoned culture with PA fiction fanbase creates a pretty sizeable subculture. So yep, it's huge, but not exactly mainstream.

Russia hasn't made a single "grand disaster" movie, for example. Most of the Moscow-carnage movies are coming out from the West (e.g. the last Cruise flick or the miserably bad Final Hour).

Technotrillers remain an out-of-mainstream direction even though there are some books in the genre (usually absolute and utter crap, though, which deals with some sort of surviving USSR in the year 2000 and the like, kicking shit in Afghanistan/Yugoslavia). Like I said, imperial failure complex propels these type of works. And even then they're not even remotely mainstream. The fact that I know of these books doesn't mean shit. Their print run is around 5-10 thousand

[Alferd Packer]

I am deeply disturbed by the Clancy phenomenon, and I can't find an explanation that wouldn't rely on some perverse consequences of an American "empire complex" (the sublime idea or want to be an Empire without being so, an "Empire of Good" if you will; often described by the crude monicker "neoliberal empire"). The thought is deeply disturbing (the British had and still have an Empire complex, just as the Russians, but both of the nations don't really produce many stories about them Teaching 'Em Dastardly Enemies a Lesson).

I think it's because we have never fought a modern war on our own soil. Consider how many countries were invaded during World War 2. Of the major players, the US remained largely inviolate. There were no bombings of New York, or choking tides of mechanized infantry sweeping across the Great Plains. Yes, millions of men went overseas and saw what war did to countries firsthand, but the vast majority of the United States only heard about these secondhand, and it never directly experienced the horrors of war.

I submit that the interest in the 'grand disaster' genre with staggering loss of life, be it from natural or artificial causes, was thoroughly beaten out of the peoples of Europe, the USSR, China, and Japan. Their populations went through it. No one was left unaffected by it. That devastation is now part of their national identities. They experienced it, and have no interest in reliving it in any circumstance.

[Simon_Jester]

This is probably true, but whether or not other nations like that, too, is kinda besides this particular point. It does explain why people in this thread can offhandedly propose "Al-Quaeda nuked New York, so we'll fucking nuke whatever country the warhead came from!" as long as its OTHER COUNTRIES that will get nuked, but get into full-blown apologetic mode when Stas posited a scenario where Al-Quaeda got the damn bomb from a radical faction in the US government (oooh that can't happen why do you even propose it?)

Stas just got derailed into minutae about communications and fiction,instead of pressing the issue. Other people dropped it,too, but it is a very interesting question that forces you to examine the policy of destroying cities because they happen to be in the country which produced the nuclear material for the bomb.

It got derailed partly because it would actually be rather difficult to steal a nuclear bomb in the US, or for a rogue military faction to get control of the nukes. If a nuclear weapon went off in, say, Los Angeles or New York, and I had to guess where the bomb came from, "the United States" would be assigned a low, probably single digit probability- just because it would be hard to steal that bomb, especially without the normal part of the government hearing about it ahead of time and being forewarned.

So whenever we have a "what if New York got nuked" scenario, our answers are going to be weighted and biased according to what plausible ways there are for New York to get nuked. We can be pretty sure that it wouldn't be, say, the Canadians who did it, because Canada has no nuclear weapons in the first place and no reason to blow up New York with them.

So if Stas had said "what if it was Canada?" I would have replied "That's just silly, Canada hasn't got any nukes or reason to use them on us." Saying "what if it was rogues in the US military" is less silly, but still quite unlikely in my honest opinion.

So the real question is: why are America's favorite stories about itself war stories?

And I think that's where we can make a point that wouldn't be equally true of any other nation on the face of the Earth: Americans are often uneasy with the idea of "The Man" as an enemy. When an American movie shows the mechanisms of the state or the corporate world as a villain, it's an unusual part of the system, a broken piece- a corrupt policeman, a single corporation that's actually a front operation for an evil mastermind. You don't see very many movies that are based on the premise that the entire domestic political system is corrupt- Hollywood does not produce revolutionary films.

It's not helped by the fact there's a massive media machine on standby, ready to criticize any piece of fition that has an anti-corporatist message as communist subversion (in lighter words).

Remember how Fox slammed the new Muppets movie because it has a rich asshole as the villain?

Yep.

Um... Russians? British? None of them seriously wanted to be the Underdog, except they happened to fall into that role once. I can't think of a single techno-thriller written in the Soviet Union (a massive superpower!) that would have the scenario of "They kill us, then we proceed to fuck 'em up with a massive military invasion/special forces/nukes". I can't find many British technothrillers with the Glorious Empire of Never-setting Sun doing the same, likewise. The British are especially relevant. Until the 1940s they had an absolutely massive world-spanning Empire. They are also culturally close to Americans (common cultural background).

Have you never heard of the British "invasion novel" genre?

Stas, I think you're suffering from a limited literary reference pool.

Perhaps in Russia's case that's a consequence of the deep WWII trauma (we "taught the Nazis a lesson", but the cost was absolutely incredible and nobody really wants to write a novel how you "teach them another lesson" with 30 million of your own citizens dying in horrendous ways). In Britain's case, though, not sure. WWI trauma?

Very possibly so, since they wrote exactly that sort of literature (allowing for cultural differences between 1900 and 2000) before World War I, at the time when the British were most firmly on top of the world and were able to flatter themselves about the inherent justice and morality of their empire.

Today, Britain no longer has an empire and has largely abandoned any pretensions of long-range power projection overseas. Russia's power projection and sphere of influence are mostly limited to its immediate neighbors. If the world were a different shape- if different people held a different balance of power- I bet you'd see a different distribution of 'invasion literature.'

Clancy kinda sorta tried to do it in Sum Of All Fears, actually, because the bomb there was made with US material, but of course almighty John Clark figured everything out in like five minutes

Which is why I'm sort of wondering what happens if the nuke comes from China, Russia or the US itself. There's no "immediately NUKE mud people" option, and so that's a discussion which is more interesting.

Yes.

What if America can't immediately retaliate? What if doesn't want to, since Russia could obliterate the US if the nukes start flying? Do they really "all fly" in case of a terrorist attack? How would the chain of command behave?

And I thought that participating in this discussion is interesting, since I'm sort of in need of certain answers for my novel about a nuclear ultimatum being issued to world powers; I'm trying to figure out how govenrments much like the ones we have now would behave in this case. But the jerk replies just got me fucking pissed off.

Remember that in mitigation, if it was a power like Russia or China the threat level rises. Muslim terrorists planting one nuclear device in the US would not present an existential threat to the US any more than they would to any other large country, because a large country can survive the loss of one city. And since countries like Pakistan have a limited number of nuclear weapons to begin with, it's fairly practical to police up their whole arsenal and make sure there are no more stolen bombs hanging around.

But if the bomb was (or might have been) created with the backing of a serious, competent nuclear power like Russia or China, that adds a whole new dimension to the threat. Turn it around- imagine St. Petersburg gets blown up by a nuclear device of American origin. Wouldn't the Russians have to wonder who was next? If the US can make one nuclear demolition charge and smuggle it into one city, what if they make two dozen of the things and smuggle them into every major city in Russia? That is not out of the question.

So the idea of nuclear terrorism backed by a major nuclear power... there's more fear of them launching a counterattack if you hit them with a massed nuclear strike in retaliation, yes. But there's also more fear that if they get away with it this time, they'll repeat the attack on a larger scale that really will ruin your country, which means you have to take the threat more seriously, since it's more likely to be repeated.

Have you read Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War? It's useful as a framing device for talking about these things, although I'm sure you'll find Kahn's assessment of the USSR very inaccurate. Try to look past that and just think about it as an abstract discussion of relations between nuclear powers in Country A and Country B, and I think it will be informative.

[K. A. Pital]

Well the invasion literature stems from the early XX century, as you noted yourself Simon Britain was the top dog at the time. Which kinda makes me wonder if the empire complex gets progressively worse the more you stay on top.

And yeah, I read Kahn.

[PeZook]

You know, the question of retaliation against a "small scale" strike or terrorism is interesting. You see, the obvious answer from a deterrence standpoint is obvious: if the US gets nuked by a foreign power, they all fly!

Anything else, and deterrence doesn't work.

Except deterrence, in this scenario has ALREADY STOPPED WORKING, because somebody just blew up your city. So I really have to wonder if the US would retaliate immediately and massively, dooming human civilization, or quietly put the policy in a shredder and attempt other retaliatory options. Remember that silo crews NOT launching their nukes, even in a full-scale exchange, was a serious concern, to the point that silo drills are designed to be indistinguishable from the real thing, at least from the crew's standpoint.

The President's thought process happening after such an attack could be an interesting literary piece in its own right.

[Luke Skywalker]

The flip side of that is that "hand bomb to terrorists and let them plant it in your cities by hand" is a great way to launch a nuclear attack on someone and keep deniability.

Well, in the OP, I never specified exactly where Al Qaeda gets the bomb. I suppose that you can discuss a multitude of scenarios...but who says that they were handed the weapon voluntarily by a nuclear armed nation? Not even North Korea would be suicidal enough to do this, and it would serve absolutely no purpose.

So if Al Qaeda stole the bomb, what do you do now? Nuke the country they stole it from for being careless?

Do you want to live in a world where someone (the US, the Russians, the Israelis, anyone) can nuke people just by smuggling the bomb into the target's country, setting it off, and then relying on their own population as human shields to protect them from retaliation?

No. I would also not want to live in a world where you can be nuked because somebody, perhaps a single man, in your country's government was an asshole or an idiot.

And even if nuking the country back in return is the "right" thing to do, it would still tarnish the United States' image, probably permanently.

What about the millions of innocent people on the target, who got killed in the first place? What about future millions of innocent people who would be killed in later attacks, once people realize they can get away with this?

Well, I also did not confirm that Al Qaeda has any more nukes. Doubtlessly, they will claim that they do. Which then begs the question as to what the States should do if it threatens to use nukes again, unless if we give into X and Y demands. Nuking them would be questionably effective, since we have no idea where these hypothetical nukes may or may not actually be, and increased security can only guarantee so much.

[Irbis]

This is probably true, but whether or not other nations like that, too, is kinda besides this particular point. It does explain why people in this thread can offhandedly propose "Al-Quaeda nuked New York, so we'll fucking nuke whatever country the warhead came from!" as long as its OTHER COUNTRIES that will get nuked, but get into full-blown apologetic mode when Stas posited a scenario where Al-Quaeda got the damn bomb from a radical faction in the US government (oooh that can't happen why do you even propose it?)

Yeah. As much as reading about armored trucks of DOOM was interesting, knee-jerk reaction to simple question kind of derailed interesting discussion. Especially that bit about US nukes being as likely to be used as Canadian ones - when simple incompetence before had 6 ready to use nuclear missiles flying into completely (well, to US military base, but if someone could arrange 'accidental' missile expedition from storage, getting it out of another, less secure base would be relatively simple) location? Why would anyone steal it from the most heavily defended location when rogue faction could invent a way to smuggle them out using, say, two teams of lowly technicians? I'm not saying it would be easy by any means, but holes in security do exist, and the probability is non-zero, rather than zero some users claimed.

[PeZook]

I have to admit though, the theft countermeasure of "use a gigantic fucking container to house your 400kg warhead in" is simplicity itself

[Simon_Jester]

Well the invasion literature stems from the early XX century, as you noted yourself Simon Britain was the top dog at the time. Which kinda makes me wonder if the empire complex gets progressively worse the more you stay on top.

All cultures have war stories- but the imagination grows fevered trying to create war stories in societies where no one can imagine a war genuinely worth fighting, because no one can imagine a serious threat that merits fighting against.

You know, the question of retaliation against a "small scale" strike or terrorism is interesting. You see, the obvious answer from a deterrence standpoint is obvious: if the US gets nuked by a foreign power, they all fly!

Anything else, and deterrence doesn't work.

Well- they all fly where, is half the question. The other half being that you have to figure out some kind of response, or you might as well just sign an unconditional surrender treaty right now.

Except deterrence, in this scenario has ALREADY STOPPED WORKING, because somebody just blew up your city. So I really have to wonder if the US would retaliate immediately and massively, dooming human civilization, or quietly put the policy in a shredder and attempt other retaliatory options. Remember that silo crews NOT launching their nukes, even in a full-scale exchange, was a serious concern, to the point that silo drills are designed to be indistinguishable from the real thing, at least from the crew's standpoint.

The President's thought process happening after such an attack could be an interesting literary piece in its own right.

Agreed.

[Questor]

The President's thought process happening after such an attack could be an interesting literary piece in its own right.

This would have been an absolutely EVIL way to end The West Wing. Nuke goes off at the end of the second to last episode, right before inauguration of Santos. The last episode is Pezook's idea. Basically, do "Twenty Five", but with a nuke.

EVIL