After ICBM silos, primary targets are (roughly in order):
1) Runways longer than 7000 feet, long enough for a B-52 to take off and land.
2) Naval bases, primarily those involved in the basing and maintenance of ballistic missile subs.
3) Command and control facilities of the U.S. military and government. This includes much of Washington D.C, the Pentagon, major government institutions like the CIA and NSA, and secondary military bases where leadership might relocate to.
4) Port facilities, which may become naval bases in a war.
5) Refineries and oil fields.
6) Concentration of heavy industry where military equipment might be made. Think of metro Detroit auto factories, or Caterpillar's factory, or Hendy Ironworks in Sunnyvale.
7) Office parks where significant brain trusts are located. You can bet that Livermore, Apple's headquarters, and the Googleplex are on a target list. (The Googleplex is actually in the blast radius for Moffett Field, so it may not need to be a separate target.) Also major universities.
8) Major city centers.
If you live in a suburban bedroom community, there is a very high chance of you surviving an initial attack unscathed. Nuke blast radiuses are often surprisingly small, relative to metro areas, and there is no reason for Russia to target a lightly-populated bedroom community 10 miles outside of the city.
But I'm curious how much if any official doctrine has become public.
If you live in a suburban bedroom community, there
is a very high chance of you surviving an initial
attack unscathed.
I don't have sources, but the list is very similar to the list I would write. I have no work experience in the field, but since the end of the cold war, my probability of nuclear war has always been much higher than most English-language commentators, so I've been keeping an ear out for information.
I would add that runways over 7000 feet would be such a high priority that even straight stretches of highway longer than that (which can be used as improvised runways) will probably be targeted (and some sections of the US interstate highway system built in the 1950s were made straight precisely so that they could be used as runways during a war).
Also, it is at least possible that they would attack the US, but not with everything they got (at least at first) and if they do that, then oil refineries would be much higher on my list than on the list in the grandparent comment because if they do decide to attack, it is probably because they (the leaders of Russia's security apparatus) are about to lose power in which case it is likely that they blame the sanctions the West has just imposed on them as the primary cause of their immanent loss of power -- and their attacking our oil refineries will have an effect on the US much like very severe sanctions would.
"Unscathed" is a questionable term here. Sure you likely don't get vaporized in the initial blast, but given grounds strikes, which to my understanding are more likely in a modern nuclear exchange you likely get enough radiation from the fallout you wish you had been vaporized. Depending on prevailing winds this can be true for a shocking distance from the impact site.
History shows that targeting civilians is by far the most effective to make the opposition concede.
With nukes, you gotta stop your nuclear armed opponent from killing you second, first.
If I had to decide on targets I would go for max destruction in terms of lives. In the initial impact and in the long term. So the biggest cities, nuclear power plants, water supply, food production.
As said when usi g this option I don't expect my people to survive as well.
Judging by how WW2 went, history seems to show the exact opposite.
If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout on steroids, but with less mutants and also less food.
Personally I don't think the human race will go extinct, but the ones that do survive are not going to live in comfy modern societies anymore. And if you are living somewhat close to a nuclear strike you are going to miss that hospital when radiation sickness sets in.
I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.
Incidentally, these areas might also be less likely to be hit by nuclear bombs.
The simple reason is that if we don't, we lose by default. Survival is the Great Game, the one that has been going on throughout history and will continue to go on for as long as life continues to exist. In the U.S. we've been lucky enough to not need to play the game for the last 3 generations or so, with survival basically assured, and so a lot of people have forgotten how to play. In its absence, we've made up a lot of other games, like "Will I get more karma on Hacker News?" or "Will I get promoted at work?" or "Will I get rich by picking the right cryptocurrency?" But it's worth remembering that these are games, on some level their results don't matter (certainly not if there's a nuclear holocaust), and we may be once again called on to play the Great Game again.
So I just try to be grateful that I don't have to play the survival game right now, while keeping perspective and remembering that that can change in an eyeblink, and trying to keep my wits and skills sharp enough that I could pick it up again if needed.
This is not to underplay the difficulty raising kids on a below average wage job.
It depends on your objective if you want to incinerate a target, maximize damage or produce maximum fallout.
Basically if you want to incinerate a small, hardened underground target you need to send a few nukes to have a high confidence level of success. If you want to damage a city and are OK with detonating in any part of the city then one might suffice. If you want fallout then you want an air burst to the West and let the Easterly winds spread the fallout.
Each missile has it’s own distance and accuracy calculations.
The author has another site called Missle Map that explores these scenarios in much more detail:
This might be true, but I've heard speculation that a surface burst would produce more fallout. Their reasoning is that fallout from an air burst would have considerably less dirt or debris so it would (supposedly) remain airborne for a longer period of time. On the other hand, a surface burst would darn near vaporize anything in the blast radius, and all that newly created radioactive debris would fall much quicker.
My sources could be incorrect, so if you've got something that indicates otherwise I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. :-)
The number of missiles and warheads available are very high, and planners identify all sorts of targets and assign priority, etc. I would imagine that factored into that are significant operational failures, operators who refuse to act, etc.
I’d assume any military significant site, current or former industrial target, interesting infrastructure, etc would be targeted multiple times. In an area like NYC, Boston, DC, SFO, forget it. If you didn’t get vaporized, you’d probably wish you did.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111203417/https://journals....
>[The] United States and Russia have the vast majority of nuclear weaps, with 4,804 and 4,480 warheads stockpiled respectively. There are approximately 1,861 nukes spread over the rest of the world, between China, Israel, the U.K, Pakistan, and India. France has the largest number of nukes after the U.S. and Russia. [0]
However, there are only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. [1]
It would not be hard to list out the most valuable US locations to destroy, government, business, and military, for either the goal of preventing C&C and/or for ending the civilization.
[0]https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
The best case scenario (in the context of a full scale nuclear war with Russia) was a couple hundred successfully detonated strikes. The eastern seaboard, and all the metropolitan areas on the west coast were smoking holes in the ground. Pretty much anywhere with a sufficiently large military base, or significant government presence was on the "likely destroyed" list. There were a lot of random inland areas, which I assumed were targeting silos.
Basically, even in the 400 bomb scenario, the Boise field office of the IRS becomes the nation's highest authority.
Only using an definition of "city" that's based on arbitrary political boundaries:
> This list refers only to the population of individual municipalities within their defined limits; the populations of other municipalities considered suburbs of a central city are listed separately, and unincorporated areas within urban agglomerations are not included. Therefore, a different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metropolitan area populations.
Metropolitan statistical areas are probably the right thing to count, and there are 358 of those over 100k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) in the US. Since US urban areas are pretty sprawling, you'd probably need multiple strikes to fully destroy most of the large ones.
When I way playing with nukemap, it looked like with a single air-burst bomb aimed the the urban core, the destruction of wooden buildings wouldn't even make it to the inner-ring suburbs.
Probably more than that across NATO, though. Not to mention that the US is in alliances other than NATO.
But closer to 1500 operationally deployed, and if they should launch any significant number of them, a substantial portion of the rest of the operationally deployed nukes in the world will be landing in Russia targeted and destroying any capacity they have to use any they have that weren't ready and deployed in the first strike.
Which is why if they use any significant number, even as a first strike, it will largely be for a counterforce strike doing the same thing to other nuclear powers, because who wants to be in a bunker without usable nukes when the guys you just nuked are in their bunker with usable nukes.
Having 6000 nukes ≠ 6000 nukes with operational readiness. If nuclear war were to break out, it is extremely unlikely that they could successfully use more than 1000 of those.
Not that that should make anyone feel any better about the situation, because even 1 nuke is too many.
Of course hindsight is always 20/20, but even before the war I had the arguments with some of my friends that modern Russia cannot produce anything at a modern world class level. How it can be possible if they pay 40k RUB to Senior Engineers working in military or space organizations, while you can get 90k RUB working as a "Sales Consultant" in electronics store. Add to this the record levels of corruption; inept leadership being assigned because of their political affiliation, rather than knowledge and experience (just check Rogozin) and you will find hard not to agree with me.
This incompetence manifests itself at all levels - starting from glorious leader Putin, who managed to convert pro-Russian Ukraine into the "NATO state" in less than 20 years; secret agents, who cannot kill a person without leaving a radioactive trace throughout the whole country and the success of "military operation" we see now.
Anyhow, obviously I'd prefer not to test my assumptions, but I believe that Russia has no hypersonic missiles - they planned to have it in production in summer, 2022 and we know what it means in Kremlin-speak. So far it's all cartoons, like their new 5th-gen aircrafts and MBTs. And I am quite confident that the vast majority of their warheads and missiles are long gone...
It doesn't seem like the U.S, Russia, or China have a hardline commitment to any particular response. If there are tit-for-tat attempts at limited escalation and deescalation, they need to be flexible.
Regardless, you need multiple warheads per target for reliability reasons, so if there's a massive nuclear war, you can probably expect a quick death rather than a slow one.
we're collecting better sources, but eventually you should be able to visualize a heatmap if you will of locations at higher risk.
We're working to add variables like wind travel direction, known military bases, etc. - super speculative, but I think it's better than what currently exists.
Bunker targets (mostly ICBM silos, heavily shielded targets like the bunkers under the White House, etc) would be targeted with a surface burst because bunkers would withstand air bursts.
Soft targets like airports, major cities, factories, ports, etc would be targeted using air bursts to maximize the destruction by preventing the shock wave and direct radiation from being shielded by geography and buildings.
On the other hand, a small stockpile will deter your enemy only if you are willing to use your stockpile on your enemy's population centers.
The US defense establishment believes the literal nuclear bombing of cities is an unlikely strategy. Russian first-strike strategy involves the usage of nuclear weapons for their Electromagnetic Pulse generating effects. The ability to destroy electricity delivery, generation, and electronic devices is just as likely to destroy or render ineffective an adversary's ability to respond as outright nuclear holocaust.
This document mentions that the use of high-voltage EMP bursts renders our nuclear arsenal vulnerable- those in silos, those in planes, and those in submarines if they are not sufficiently hardened against these attacks.
The real question would be whether a submarine captain would be willing to press the button based on radio silence alone.
>> HEMP Threat To U.S. Submarines?
> HEMP attack could achieve for Russia a key objective the USSR could not achieve during the Cold War—neutralizing U.S. ballistic missile submarines at sea.
> Russian Super-EMP weapons could destroy or degrade U.S. bombers, ICBMs, SSBNs in port and their strategic C3I—including land-based VLF communications systems, TACAMO aircraft, and other redundant means of strategic command and control used to convey Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) to submarines hiding at sea. Severing their communications links to the National Command Authority would neutralize U.S. submarines, rendering them useless.
> HEMP could also be used to attack submarines on patrol at sea directly.
> A high-yield warhead (1 megaton or more) detonated for HEMP over the ocean would cover an area 2,200 kilometers in radius, a zone nearly as large as North America, with powerful E3 HEMP that would penetrate the ocean depths and possibly damage or destroy the electronics of submarines on patrol. Submarines would be especially vulnerable when deploying their very long antennae—which they need to do precisely when trying to receive EAMS.
Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if they target the civilian airport (where there's also a small ANG presence) or use multiple warheads for the metro area, I'll probably be vaporized.
Obviously I know no one posting here can answer definitively, since I'm asking about some of the toppest of top secret stuff.