Why were Cold War nuclear arsenals so big ?

[Adam Reynolds]

I'm also quite certain that both sides have biological/chemical weapons which can wipe out most of the human population on their own. Not to mention livestock and crops. You don't need as many nukes if you have completely independent backup WMDs.

No one likes or trusts Biological or Chemical Weapons. Chemical weapons because it is possible for the enemy via MOPP gear to become fully immune to your Chemical agent and Bioweapns are always double edged weapons.

Any bioweapon strong enough to do the job is also strong enough to move right back across the border to you. Both are great weapons for killing large numbers of civilians and possibly yourself, but not so good at hitting the bunker of the foreign leader.

Which is a lovely sentiment, but do you think that actually stopped the production of said weapons? That they completely destroyed every single one of them? Or do you think it's more likely that they are kept under lock and key, just in case? Mutally Assured Destruction doesn't have to involve just nukes.

When it comes down to it, biochemical weapons aren't worth it because they are too hard to deliver on target. Nuclear weapons by contrast are relatively easy to deliver, even with reliability problems as Sea Skimmer pointed out.

MAD works without nuclear weapons if you lack them. If you have nuclear weapons, there is little need for chemical weapons. And no sane power would ever seriously develop biological weapons. Books like Ken Alibeck's Biohazard overstate things(using someone who makes a profit by increased fears about biological weapons as a source about them is rather unreliable). Regardless US researchers have largely contradicted much of what he stated. Personally I would be more concerned about a natural virus(as is USARMID).

Even terrorists prefer explosions or shootings to biochemcial attacks because they are higher profile and instantly attributable. While it is certainly a concern that it could happen, it is somewhat overstated. When Aum Shinrikyo launched multiple attacks, killing a dozen people in their largest, there was little publicity for their efforts. Contrast this with the publicity of the Boston bombing which only killed three.

[TimothyC]

That may be true as I haven't laid eyes on them in years. The list has a Nike site close-ish to the location of the silos I mentioned, but it's still a good ways off.

I think it's more likely that the silos held Minuteman Missiles. Here's a story about how they were hidden pretty much everywhere.

The description you have given does not fit with the known features of a minuteman launch site, nor does it fit with a Titan Launch site. It might fit with an Atlas site (which did have the missiles stored horizontally).

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you for the informative response TimothyC and Sea Skimmer. So it appears that nukes are used to target specific high value targets such as tank of aircraft factories,railway junctions , naval yards etc. So the number of targets add up fast in a big country like USA or Russia. Some military targets like command centers or silos are also hardened.

Now here is the thing. Can you enforce MAD without going after these targets ? I believe the technical term is countervalue. Just target the cities. Don't bother to hit all the military bases, industrial plants, transportation hubs etc. If few hundred of the biggest American cities get hit by megaton yield nukes would it not end the USA as a country ? It would not matter that military bases and some infrastructure was not hit.

The problem (from the point of view of an attacker) is that if you didn't destroy the military bases and the command infrastructure, then the crippled, ruined, gutted wreck of a nation you just bombed is still a threat. And it will remain so for some time. Because even if you destroyed the industry and transportation networks that support its military strength, those bases can still launch a nuclear attack, and will likely retain that capability for weeks or months, if not years.

If you are a nuclear power that just launched a first strike and killed two hundred million Americans, but didn't kill the nuclear-armed B-2 bomber fleet, you are going to end up taking about as nasty a beating as the US just did. Better make sure you nailed those B-2s. And the missile submarines. And so on.

The reason this is such an issue is that nuclear wars, like all wars, would presumably start for a reason. Someone has to decide to push the button. An accident might conceivably result in a single isolated nuclear attack, but not an all-out offensive (unless someone responds to the accident by deciding to launch their full offensive nuclear arsenal).

Therefore, the means (nuclear war) cannot be considered separately from the end (the reason you decided it was worth fighting a war at all). If you ruin an enemy country but leave their 'teeth' intact, you have not removed their power to interfere with your goals. And you've given them literally every reason in the world to do exactly that. So you almost guarantee that your own goal (even if that goal is 'survive') will not be achieved.

So yes, if you are committed to a nuclear war, you must commit as much nuclear force as is needed to destroy the enemy's military and command structure. Otherwise you will most likely fail in your objective, even if your objective is "be alive to see tomorrow's sunrise."

[KroLazuxy_87]

That may be true as I haven't laid eyes on them in years. The list has a Nike site close-ish to the location of the silos I mentioned, but it's still a good ways off.

I think it's more likely that the silos held Minuteman Missiles. Here's a story about how they were hidden pretty much everywhere.

The description you have given does not fit with the known features of a minuteman launch site, nor does it fit with a Titan Launch site. It might fit with an Atlas site (which did have the missiles stored horizontally).

I'm afraid I was either unclear or you misread a statement of mine. I never said anything about horizontal missile storage.

My original description of "huge mounds of grass and dirt over the concrete hatches" seems to fit very well with the known features of a minuteman launch site that has been decommissioned and buried.

[Sea Skimmer]

Actually it doesn't at all. Minuteman start nearly flush to the ground, and when destroyed are left completely flush to the ground and nothing but flat earth. All the upper structure is destroyed and the silo filled in. The entire point is to return the land to civilian use. I've never seen or heard of one being mounted over, it makes no damn sense. Nor would it require more then a single mound. Each silo is miles from another. Some were decommissioned for arms treaty purposes by blowing up the upper structure, then filled in later, but this actually left them as open craters for some years. Mounding over would cost extra money, and accomplish nothing.

The closest missile thing I could imagine to what you describe is a Nike SAM site, which did have varying numbers of earth berms to isolate certain buildings from the blast effects of an accidental warhead explosion. Mainly the missile assembly building would always have blast berms, but sometimes other structures did too on sites with very small amounts of land. However a collection of ammo bunkers or similar installation would be more likely.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which is a lovely sentiment, but do you think that actually stopped the production of said weapons? That they completely destroyed every single one of them?

As far as weaponized devices and stockpiles goes they certainly did in the west and Russia. The things sucked in any militarily useful terms and the vast majority of them had jack crap for storage lifespans on top of that. Even anthrax spores which themselves can last centuries did not last long in militarily useful dispersal devices because they had to be mixed with silica dust to get any reasonable dispersion, and the mixtures weren't stable. Silca doesn't want to stay stuck to anthrax.

Most bioweapons functionally would have had to be made 'on demand' which meant large facilities, and yet still at least several weeks to produce a useful sized batch. And then needed refrigerated storage.

Anthrax meanwhile doesn't spread person to person, making it more akin to a chemical then a viral or bacterial bioweapon, and thus very unappealing for large scale use. Its supposed ability to make land uninhabitable for long periods is not really supported by practical science. Or at least if we believed that science which does exist, the anthrax letter attacks in the US should have killed hundreds instead of in some cases failing to kill even people whom physically handled them.

Chemical weapons also generally had and have horrific storage lifespans unless you make binary forms of nerve gas. But binary nerve gas was less then reliable and rather expensive, and anyway never would make sense against strategic as opposed to battlefield targets if you could simply drop a nuclear bomb. As shown by the attacks in Damascus in 2013 you can fire a non trivial amount of nerve gas into your own capital and get away with it more or less 'safely' while even a 2kt tactical nuclear bomb would have been largely unusable against the same targets. They make a certain sense on the battlefield, but in strategic terms chemicals are only useful if you don't have nukes. And at this point you'd accomplish more dropping smart bombs then nerve gas. Assad was weak on smart bombs, otherwise so many massively fortified buildings in Jobar wouldn't be such a problem for his troops.

As far as anyone can tell the only reason the US persisted with biological weapons so long was to kill the Chinese rural population, but using anti crop weapons. This was a counter to Chinese claims of how they'd drown everyone in a human sea in any new war and more or less the height of paranoia. Its no coincidence that Nixon reopened relations with mainland China the same year he ordered all US bioweapons and programs dismantled.

The Soviets kept making bioweapons until the end of the cold war, but honestly, they made every weapon until they bankrupted themselves. Hard logic needed not apply.

Or do you think it's more likely that they are kept under lock and key, just in case? Mutally Assured Destruction doesn't have to involve just nukes.

The basic reality is a 2,000lb nuclear bomb can gut the heart out of a city or destroy all but a few dozen military targets on the whole planet, at least given a near direct hit. 2,000lb of chemical or bio weapons will possibly gut the center of a small town, and can be 100% negated by personal and collective protective equipment. They really just don't compare. This is why almost everyone on the planet agreed to get rid of chemical and bio agents. They aren't country ending the way nukes are, and thus have only limited value as deterrents, and frankly not much more then mass bombing with conventional guided bombs would have (hard to fight back with no oil refineries ect...) and generally are really only useful as a way to oppress a population or spread shear terror. This is a remote goal from a nation state seeking to destroy another completely. Never mind the fact that for bioweapons we now have vaccines to most of the really useful ones anyway.

[sarevok2]

Regarding countervalue vs counterforce. The arguement seem to be that survive military forces will come after you if you only target.

However is that really a problem in a nuclear change ? Say for example a modern US vs China situation. China does not have many strategic weapons, the true size of their arsenal is a mystery. Lets just say they manage to hit few hundred US cities. In return US hit lot more Chinese cities. Now would it really matter how much US military has survived ? China is gone. And the US probably finished as a nation or at least an important power.

Another thing, this time about ABM. I seen suggestion that ABM would be ineffective in full blown nuclear exchange. Apparently high altitude like a smokescreen the effects of high altitude nuclear detonations would render radar ineffective. And prevent ABM systems from engaging incoming targets. Any truth to this ? Any possible ways to counter it ?

[Sea Skimmer]

However is that really a problem in a nuclear change ? Say for example a modern US vs China situation. China does not have many strategic weapons, the true size of their arsenal is a mystery. Lets just say they manage to hit few hundred US cities.

Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they hit several hundred US military bases instead? If you want to just ignore any actual logic then what is even the point of discussing this? What if the Chinese fired nuclear weapons at the moon to make a portrait of Mao?

In return US hit lot more Chinese cities. Now would it really matter how much US military has survived ? China is gone. And the US probably finished as a nation or at least an important power.

The US military could then blockade China for decades and generally keep trying to kill a many Chinese as possible, but none of this makes sense and at present we actually have little reason to think China could hit more then dozens of targets in the US. Which would imply attacking cities is the only option, but would also be far less capable of ending the US as a functional national. Remember you can kill 50% of the US population and its still one of the largest countries on earth.

Actually though this just reflects the fact that the global position of China is such that it does not have a reason to fear the US, nor the US China, the way the US and USSR were so combative. And that a nuclear war between the two countries is absurdly implausible even were a conventional war to break out. Simply nothing is on the table that would demand a nuclear response or surrender the way a full scale war in Europe could. And that's precisely why China felt it could get away with a policy of minimal deterrence, while it always used its vast army as a deterrent to the USSR. That policy was seen as bad by the 1980s, but the Berlin wall fell before China could make any serious changes to its military structure. Now modern China and its position in the world is changing fast, its military is changing fast from reforms started in 1988 to abandon the peoples war strategy (this was sped up by the Gulf War proving mass infantry were doomed in the face of modern arms) but still we lack any credible flashpoint that compared to the intergerman border. Most concerns reflect the Chinese lack of experience on the world stage, but that problem will be self solving.

Another thing, this time about ABM. I seen suggestion that ABM would be ineffective in full blown nuclear exchange. Apparently high altitude like a smokescreen the effects of high altitude nuclear detonations would render radar ineffective.

It can, nuclear blackout, however this is because of incredible intensive persistent radiation which will also have a high chance of destroying the nuclear warheads on offensive RVs. And the radius covered is very small, single digit kilometers per nuke, such that multiple radars on the ground can simply look around them. Nuclear blackout was a reason to stop using high yield nuclear warheads on ABM missiles themselves, but it does nothing to negate the actual utility of ABM defenses.

The fact is most of the bullshit about ABM comes from two places. 1) Russian propaganda, 2) western peacemongers whom lie like crazy and oppose all weapons. The latter can just be ignored. The former... has had an active strategic ABM system since 1978. And is presently working on brand new ABM systems all while contending the US system doesn't work... that sound legit to you? Oh and Russia also says US ABM doesn't work while claiming its new hypersonic boost glide weapons, will defeat US ABM. LOGICAL RIGHT? But very typical of the way Russian propaganda is geared to simply confuse the moronic and ignorant, which happen to be the majority of all people.

The US says ABM works and has proven it over and over again since 1962. Russia has multiple ABM systems but says US ABM doesn't work. Japan has ABM and spends billions working on it jointly with the US. China has multiple ABM programs but never says anything about them one way or another, just as it does talk about its nuclear weapons ever, India has an ABM program, western Europe has multiple tactical ABM programs and those foolish Dutch morons bought exo atmospheric missiles form the US. I'm, kind of struggling to think of other relevant countries for the top end of technology, except Brazil... also has an ABM program.

ABM works. People oppose it because they oppose armaments and claim that buying weapons makes war more likely. I have yet to see anyone ever show a credible example of where someone started a war because they had too many weapons, let alone defensive. Let alone weapons which incapable of striking any target within the atmosphere. I know however of numerous examples meanwhile of poorly armed states being overrun by more aggressive opponents. Norway in 1940 is a prime example. Worse armed then it was in 1914, its defense policy was actually called the 'policy of the broken rifle' and this was literal, rifle bolts were stored separately from rifles. That was because the pacifist government was so pacifist it came to fear that it was going to be subject to a military coup to.... restore the national military to actually existing. Worked out AWESOME.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. To expand on that for anyone who doesn't have all of WWII history pretty well memorized, Norway got hit by a massive simultaneous surprise amphibious attack by the Nazis, who used basically their entire navy to land troops in many places up and down the Norwegian coast.

Now, this wasn't a full-blown attack by the hundreds of thousands of soldiers the Germans could have deployed against a power on the same landmass as themselves. It was a relatively limited attack, the Germans had only a small number of available warships to cover it, and the whole thing relied almost entirely on speed, surprise, and being able to fully occupy strategic points all over Norway before the British or French could get troops into the country.

Even as it was, though, the few Norwegian units that actually mobilized and were fighting-fit at the time of the invasion inflicted enough damage to seriously inconvenience the Germans. Thus, the sneak attack would have been fairly easily foiled by relatively simple expedients like, oh, having the active-duty Norwegian army in a position to rapidly grab their rifles and start shooting at invading German soldiers. And having some cannons dug in to cover the approaches to major Norwegian harbors.
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I think the root of the confusion around the belief that "buying weapons causes wars" is the observation that all warmongering nations are heavily armed. To which one might reply- "Of course they are." Because if you're planning to fight a war, the first thing you do is stock up on weapons.

Then the causation gets reversed, and instead of people saying "if A then B," they say "if B then A," where A is 'warmongering nation' and B is 'heavily armed.'

[Purple]

I don't think that's it. If anything I think the opposite is true. Basically, the worlds superpowers are always war mongering sociopaths empires. This was true back in Roman times and in 1914 and its true today. So when people see one country building up armaments in an effort to become a major player in the world stage they assume, and rightly so that the nearest opposed sociopathic empire is going to start flexing its muscles to prevent that. And that's how you get sanctions, instigated coups and revolutions, cold wars and wars. And the overall notion is that it's better to keep out of the whole thing.