[Serious] Nuclear war survival guide.

[Anomalocaris]

In most cases, the ideal use of a nuclear weapon for maximum destruction involves an air burst, which has a lot less fall out, but a wider radius of destruction, depending on the altitude. People who don't live near a military base, missile silo, or major city would likely be in no immediate danger from the burst or fallout (unless the air currents have it out for them). It could be impossible to sustain a nationwide government in the aftermath of 10% or more of the population dying and massive infrastructure damage in a very short timeframe.

unfortunately a limited nuclear counterforce strike will likely consist primarily of ground bursts against hardened targets such as missile silos and underground command posts, which are targets that can not be destroyed by an air burst and which tend to be located well away from population centers.   So a limited nuclear war will likely kill civilians primarily by fall out.


But looking forward in time, US withdraw from the anti ballistic missile test and deployment of ballistic missile defence driven Russian and Chinese interest  in unorthodox delivery methods originally considered in the 1950s which remains almost impossible to intercept but which have no ability to access strategic weapon sites deep inland in enemy territory.   so these weapon would return focus to counter value against coastal urban targets.    They use enhanced fallout as its primary means of inflicting damage inland, not as byproduct of ground burst against targets on the coast,.   One example is russian deployment of nuclear powered unmanned miniature submarine that carried a massive 50-100MT warhead.  the submarine’s size abs low speed means it is all but impossible to detect.    it is meant to sail near enemy coast and detonate underwater, throwing up enormous cloud of radioactive water that will disperse down wind leaving a 1000 mile long lethal fallout tail.   if such a weapon is denoted off new york, the area of leath al fallout will reach miami.

So we may see a return from counterforce doctrine that focus nuclear attacks on military targets that the the US and USSR adopted in 1970s and which remain central to their doctrine, to the earlier counter value doctrine that focus on attack against civilian population areas prevalent in 1950s and 1960.    So it is reasonable to suppose by the end of this decade, the mix of threats from nuclear weapons faced by Americans will change.    Major costal population centers, such as New York and Los Angeles will not much more likely be directly attacked by very high yield warheads delivered by unmanned suicide submarines.  Blast would well return as a major civilian killer.     Such weapons can’t go inland, so they are designed to deliver massive fallout against inland largest beyond their blast range, because they are counter value and not counter force.   So outside of the coastal areas, areas that previously would have largely been free from threat of fallout due to their relative position with respect to missile silos and other targets that would have received a counter force attack, will now also be susceptible to to fallout from weapons that deteonate in different locations off the coast and designed to deliver enhanced fallout. 

I think we are seeing America’s ballistic missile defence, as well as american led afford to nullify the credibility of existing Russian nuclear deterrence, which led to the current conflict in Ukraine, is now clearly on track to making nuclear war both more likely and more lethal for the US.

[Jehanne]

In most cases, the ideal use of a nuclear weapon for maximum destruction involves an air burst, which has a lot less fall out, but a wider radius of destruction, depending on the altitude. People who don't live near a military base, missile silo, or major city would likely be in no immediate danger from the burst or fallout (unless the air currents have it out for them). It could be impossible to sustain a nationwide government in the aftermath of 10% or more of the population dying and massive infrastructure damage in a very short timeframe.

On a purely historical note which would be apples to oranges with respect to a nuclear war concerns The Plague in Late Medieval Europe; in places where upwards of half of the population had died, government and society did not break down but continued to function.

But, again, apples & oranges.

[Anomalocaris]

that was the result of cold war era studies, which was based on recent natural disasters and localized results in WWII I believe.


but keep in mind, the closer to the land and less dependent on trade and commerce the society, the less likely is it for parts of that society to stop functioning because some other parts are dead.    

kill half of people in a region inhabited by hunter gatherer or subsistence farmers, the rest can probably continue to function unaffected.    Kill half of the people in a city or suburb, the rest probably split between being killed by eachother to gain dwindling stock of food and fleeing into the country.   city and suburb would probably empty out abs stop functioning as transportation and communication hubs.

[Paleophyte]

They use enhanced fallout as its primary means of inflicting damage inland, not as byproduct of ground burst against targets on the coast,.   One example is russian deployment of nuclear powered unmanned miniature submarine that carried a massive 50-100MT warhead.  the submarine’s size abs low speed means it is all but impossible to detect.    it is meant to sail near enemy coast and detonate underwater, throwing up enormous cloud of radioactive water that will disperse down wind leaving a 1000 mile long lethal fallout tail.   if such a weapon is denoted off new york, the area of leath al fallout will reach miami.

I'm not sure who is projecting this but it's very wrong. For a start, Miami is upwind of New York, so you'd want to park that sub off Miami, not the other way around. Though you'd be better off hitting the west coast or the gulf given the wind directions. Not that it'd make much difference, because nuking water is woefully inefficient. The majority of the neutrons get soaked up as stable isotopes. You'll get a little tritium and radioactive oxygen but not much. Unless deliberately designed to beach itself, seafloor sediment would only be caught up in the periphery of the blast and wouldn't get much neutron flux. Much more effective to use an old fashioned cobalt-salted bomb. And those massive warheads are massively wasteful. The overwhelming majority of their energy punches upward through the relatively thin atmosphere and is lost to space. In doing so it's going to throw astonishing amounts of radioactive crud high into the stratosphere where it will circle the globe and rain back down on the very people who launched it.

All of that neglects the fact that these weapons would be useless to negative utility in a nuclear war. Sure, you can cause massive civilian casualties days after the first strike. That has little to no effect on the enemy's military, especially their nuclear weapons. The very weapons that might have stayed in their silos in a more limited exchange but which are much more likely to fly after these more indiscriminate dirty weapons are deployed against civilians.

[Anomalocaris]

It is designed to sail as close in shore as possible before detonating, preferably into a harbor near a coastal city.   So it will produce as much fallout from the sea floor as 50mt salted bomb as possible , which will then be entrained in the water plume it throws up.  It would not make sense to detonate it in deep water.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world...atus-6.htm

It’s capability is obviously not gear to fighting and winning a limited nuclear war that focuses on destruction of the enemy’s military capability and political leadership, and inflict civilian damage only as collateral casualty.    

It is likely intended to be triggered by a deadman switch system should Russia be destroyed or severely incapacitated in a nuclear war.    Being small, relatively slow, quiet, nuclear powered, and thus able to take circuitous routes to reach targets from unpredicatble direction and unpredictable times,  it would be very difficult to detect and stop.    It will arrive weeks or months after the first nuclear exchange, but that does not nullify its purpose so long as Russia’s enemy knows Russia had it and it works before any perspective nuclear war.

It’s objective is to let the enemy know that no type of success in nuclear war with Russia could stop these revenge weapons nor prevent large tracts of the victor’s coastal territory from being rendered uninhabitable for decades, thus altering any fundamental balance sheet analysis of whether to pursue the nuclear option in the first place.

Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, had previously deployed other deadman switch systems for similar purpose of letting Russia’s enemy know no first strike is likely to succeed.   The system was called perimeter.    It’s deadman switch  was a number of special ICBMs connected to a network of sensors which can detect, classify and locate nearby as well as distant nuclear explosions in soviet territory.   If a prescribed number and location of nuclear detonations are detected, a successful surprise nuclear attack on the USSR is automatically assumed, because in any other scenario where hostile nuclear weapon detonate on or over the USSR, Soviet missile should have been lashed already.   

Once the detonations are detected, The special ICBMs are then automatically launched.    The special ICBM differs from normal ICBM in that each carried a special command communication package that sends e launch instruction to all remaining Soviet strategic missiles and other nuclear platforms such as missile submarines and bombers, after the command missile reach prescribed altitude, and instruct them to automatically launch their weapons without inputs from their crews.     The purpose of the system is also to let Russia’s enemy know that successfully decapitating Soviet military and civilian leadership will not stop all out revenge strike.