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176 Comments
- richmomz, on 07/07/2009, -1/+71I think the idea was (is?) that by having so many warheads scattered everywhere it becomes almost impossible for your adversary to wipe them all out in a pre-emptive nuclear strike (whereas if you only had a few hundred that becomes a real possibility). So by removing the possibility of a successful pre-emptive strike, you remove the incentive to launch a nuclear attack in theory.
It basically ensured that the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine remained in effect to deter both sides from getting any ideas about being able to get away with nuking their adversary. - blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -0/+62France created their own nukes because they believed the US would never "trade New York for Paris".
Their reasoning was thus: The US had a "no first strike" policy as did the USSR. If the USSR launched a conventional attack against NATO on Europe, chances were high that NATO would lose (they were numerically inferior by a good margin). Now, unless the US used their nuclear weapons to even the balance, Europe would be screwed. France believed that the US would not initiate a nuclear war to save Europe because it would mean the US would attract a retaliation from the USSR: MAD, etc.
It also shows a logic problem with nuclear policy of the time. NATO would require nuclear weapons on the behalf of the US to fend off conventional USSR attacks. The US had a 'no first strike' policy. Here we have a situation where the US would need to conduct a first strike, or simply cave in to Soviet aggression. If they allow them to take Europe, what about the rest of the world, less the continental USA? If they stop them with nukes, then things escalate from nation-danger to civilisation-danger quite rapidly. No, it was a messy scenario.
By having their own nuclear deterrent, France believed that the USSR would be less likely to exploit the above, and indeed the stability in the region would be increased. If the USSR invaded Europe, the French would have the capability to thwart conventional attacks with their own nuclear arsenal, although it wouldn't quite constitute MAD. The Russians would be faced with striking first against France (and thus drawing themselves into a confrontation with NATO) or allowing a strike against themselves.
It put the area on even more of a 'hair-trigger', but luckily nobody ever took the metaphorical gun out of its box and pointed it at someone. The policy seemed to work fine for France and the rest of Europe, but the issue is very complicated, more than I could cover in the level of detail possible here. - pooter654, on 07/08/2009, -3/+45God dammit, why do you have to ruin everyone's day with knowledge?
- cnot3, on 07/07/2009, -1/+40And politicians talk about disarming! We'll need those nukes when aliens invade.
- Shaggy3, on 07/07/2009, -3/+39The Cold War must have been terrifying to live through.. Lets hope we never see another one.
- lorddazzer, on 07/08/2009, -0/+29And Australia is like ... "WTF, mate?"
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -0/+28Actually- things were MORE stable during the Cold War.
MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) kept both sides from going too far.
Now we have unstable countries with nukes like North Korea, Iran and Pakistan building nuclear arsenals and working feverishly to build long range delivery systems.
We live in a world where nuclear release is much more likely than it was during the Cold War. - dafragsta, on 07/08/2009, -0/+27Seriously... why are the fonts so goddamn small?
- Dynamoo, on 07/07/2009, -9/+32More than 10,000 nukes. Probably enough to take the crust off the planet.
- cnot3, on 07/07/2009, -1/+24Well, it was better than a "hot" war. There are numerous technologies and advancements that would not have come about without the intense rivalry between the USA and the USSR .
- getoffmybridge, on 07/08/2009, -5/+27Clearly shows which 2 countries do the most dick waving. I'm surprised France is so well-armed.
- DrZmobie, on 07/08/2009, -1/+20Nuclear Launch Detected.
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -0/+18What a lot of people seem to forget is that the architects of America's nuclear strategy grew up in the shadow of Pearl Harbor. The idea of a "nuclear" Pearl Harbor hung over a whole generation of military planners and politicians.
The United States developed a three pronged nuclear strategy to prevent just such a pre-emptive attack designed to disarm the country. With bombers, missiles and ballistic missile submarines, it would be impossible to wipe out the entire force and a devastating counterattack could be launched.
This did NOT mean that we wanted such a war to occur. Everything that we did was to prevent it from occurring. - blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -1/+19I'd say historically the reason is because Russia is a terrible frozen wasteland that consumes all who try to enter. Except the Russians, of course, they've already been consumed but have ample vodka supplies to survive there.
- Jamiekin, on 07/08/2009, -1/+19Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to make sure.
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -2/+20During the bad old days of the Cold War many of those ICBMs were loaded with special biological warheads that would disperse weapons grade anthrax over hundreds of square miles.
We learned about their cheating on bioweapons when they screwed up in 1979 and leaked anthrax on a community and had a mass incident. They tried to blame it on tainted meat but when is the last time you've heard of 100+ people dropping dead of anthrax under natural causes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_le ...
Talk ***** about the United States all day. The fact is the Soviets couldn't wait to break an arms control treaty. That's why it was so difficult to deal with them. - sfasu77, on 07/08/2009, -0/+17Thanks for the explanation... that was very informative.
- ZenFountain, on 07/08/2009, -0/+17http://yfrog.com/b222223523j
Larger image from the pdf that you can actually read. - FortyCaliber, on 07/08/2009, -0/+15Like you said... it's the only way to be sure.
- andrewh7, on 07/08/2009, -2/+17For example, space race, without which we would never have invented Tang.
- maz2331, on 07/08/2009, -0/+15Nah, just enough to depopulate the planet.
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -1/+15Most of those nukes have yields of less than 200 kilotons.
Enough to fatally irradiate the planet but not to melt it. - inactive, on 07/08/2009, -3/+16Technology is like a genie: once it is out of the bottle, there is no controlling it.
None of the nuclear powers are showing any signs of disarming and it would be national suicide for us to do so. - getoffmybridge, on 07/08/2009, -0/+13Yeah no *****, thanks man
- DougChristian, on 07/08/2009, -3/+15It's a visual approximation for conceptual purposes, not a NORAD map. Relax.
- blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -0/+12In reply to the various comments above in reply to my initial post, and to provide some book recommendations: It's an interesting subject. Practically all Cold War era nuclear strategy is useless in today's context (at least, for direct application; it still has strong value intrinsically however) simply because of things like the "geopolitical" distribution of power and lack of the basic factors that created the Cold War in the first place.
However, as I have found it very interesting to study as a subject, so it seems have several others (ertw1 also wants some texts). I can recommend the following texts as a good source of information on the rationale, tactics, strategy and decision making frameworks behind nuclear policy of the cold war, and indeed, suggested alternate policy that arose during that time. The whole idea of actually fighting a nuclear war is interesting, and so are the policies and ideas peripheral to that.
Firstly, you will want to find some books by Herman Kahn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn%29, who famously was involved in the creation of the "RAND Corporation"- A government think tank, and for his almost cold and clinical examinations of nuclear war strategy. Some say "Dr Strangelove" was in part based upon him. He was a master of "Game Theory" and other mathematically inclined politically relevant sciences. Of particular note is his book "On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios". I have a first edition and that was published in 1965, so be prepared to search dusty old 2nd hand bookshops for it. I had to do so, but then, I live in Australia and I didn't want to order it internationally and deal with foreign currency, shipping, etc. Thanks Pensacola Junior High; that's where my copy has a library imprint from. I have no idea why a junior high needed a tome as dense and potentially depressing as this.
Also by the same author: "On Thermonuclear War". Quite hard to read at times (it gets a little dry), it is overall quite interesting. It came out a little before "On Escalation", and when reading both of these you must keep in mind the technological limitations and innovations available at the time. Submarine based missiles were inaccurate and unreliable, bombers made up a huge portion of the strategic force, and ICBM's had a rather appreciable failure rate (or were expected to when used in war). "On Thermonuclear War" has some great, fantastic chapters that some of you will love, including discussions on "Will the Survivors Envy the Dead?" and the author's own ideas on what would constitute an ideal civil defense program.
To supplement the information in Kahn's books (he wrote another in the 80's called "Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980's" which is also apparently quite good, but which I don't have yet), you can get a book called "The War Atlas: Armed Conflict - Armed Peace" (1983) which will paint you a more modern picture than Kahn's of the strategic situation near the "Second peak" of the Cold War. It has detailed maps showing stockpiles, force strengths, production capacity, all sorts of stuff. Combine "The War Atlas" with Kahn's books and you have a good idea of how a nuclear war would flow, strategically at least.
You also need an understanding of weapons, and for that I suggest "Nuclear Weapon Effects" (or something similar to that) which was a government research based publication, and which can be found in pdf format online. It contains descriptions and talk about the physics of a nuclear weapon, thermal, emp, blast and other forces.
You will also find excellent technical info at this site: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/ particularly in their FAQ (just scroll down and you will hit it), and their linked references (keep scrolling). Combine this with the above and you might have a somewhat serviceable understanding of the tactical considerations of nuclear war.
After all the above, you will have a nice basic understanding. Realise though that while Kahn was a government consultant, his policy was not the US policy (however, he makes it clear what is and isn't US policy), just his advised policy and mostly just his ideas. He was rather more level headed than the politicians of the time, and had the chilling combination of that and a belief in perhaps a winnable nuclear confrontation, or at least one that was worth surviving. Some areas of his writing are flawed, and you will see this (for instance, his optimism about recovering from a large scale attack is unrealistic in a few examples), but other parts are very very interesting (say, his "Escalation Ladder" theory which "On Escalation" presents, or his various hypothetical "Doomsday Devices" he presents in "On Thermonuclear War").
I can't provide you with a complete list of texts, because there simply isn't one. You need to read constantly and keep updating your knowledge. Read from both sides of the fence (pro/anti weapons, republican/democrat, military/civilian sources), and through a wide range of years (I recommend 1960-1970 and 1980-1989 as good ranges to look in) for the best idea. Never forget that it was a very complicated time, with many ethical and practical considerations that had to be made. Also realise you will probably never have your own *complete* understanding, and that at best, you will understand what *everyone else* thought they knew.
Enjoy it though, it's a really interesting part of history, and a fascinating topic. - ThatGeek, on 07/08/2009, -5/+16umm... or they have a nuclear program actively trying to make a weapon
- andrewh7, on 07/08/2009, -4/+15If North Korea is so dangerous, why didn't we invade them to take away the WMDs we knew were there rather than Iraq looking for ones that most of us knew weren't there?
- blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -2/+13Whether or not you peel off the crust or just kill every living person seems a little irrelevant in terms of practical importance. :)
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -0/+10Sure pal- they're nice and warm and fuzzy and don't shoot people in the back that are trying to escape starvation and/or repression.
- whipnet, on 07/08/2009, -0/+10Rogue meaning North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 that they signed in 1985.
* - EntangledPhysx, on 07/08/2009, -0/+10No kidding. And they have a lot more nukes then the USA does.
- Asmordean, on 07/08/2009, -1/+11Psst. Guardian, the world is a sphere. http://gizmodo.com/5302604/just-where-can-north-ko ...
- 0biKwiet, on 07/08/2009, -2/+11I think nuclear dis-armament is a bad idea. The cat's out of the bag. You don't need but a handful of nukes to assure the destruction of modern civilization. The reason we have a lot of them is to assure the impossibility of a successful first strike. I believe we should find a reasonable cost effective number of nukes at which we can keep this status, and forget about it. Politicians who talk of nuclear disarmament are just posturing.
I think people should stop and think about how many lives would have been lost if nuclear weapons had not been discovered. There is a much greater likely hood that the cold war would have gone hot. The fact that the leaders of a modern super power sign their own death warrants by pursuing a course of action that leads to direct confrontation with another is probably the single greatest agent of peace in the history of man kind. With out it, modern technology would assure that conventional warfare would do the job that nuclear weapons never had to. - Namaha, on 07/08/2009, -0/+9The French? You mean the US?
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryfaqs/f/neut ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb - Metatron197, on 07/08/2009, -1/+9Holy nuclear holocaust Batman!
- z0rk, on 07/08/2009, -2/+10Quick! To the Bat Cave!
- grantmoore3d, on 07/08/2009, -0/+8Like he said... it's the only way to be sure.
- blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -0/+8I already posted about this above in more detail, but the basic reason is that the French didn't believe the US would use nuclear weapons to save Europe from a conventional attack by the USSR (because the US would be initiating a nuclear war and possibly be drawn into a conflict they might otherwise have avoided). So they built their own deterrent. In terms of success, there was never a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, but that's not the only way to judge success of course. I'm just glad nothing ever erupted into war.
- DBLaise, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7And 1000 is never enough......
- JaseFace, on 07/08/2009, -1/+8You don't think the leader of North Korea is ***** insane?
Iran's leaders are more pragmatic, but at this point Kim jung il really doesn't give a ***** one anyone says, even China. - cyborgmexican, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7Didn't you ever see Signs? They would use simple ground tactics to avoid provoking us into destroying the planet.
- vatosplace, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7Joshua.
Greetings, Professor Falken.
Hello.
Are you still playing the game?
Of course. I should reach DEFCON 1
and launch my missiles in 28 hours.
Would you like to see|some projected kill ratios?
69% of the housing destroyed.
72 million people dead?
Is this a game
or is it real? - TheDougem, on 07/08/2009, -1/+8The Government's name has changed, but the same beast still lurks in Russia. We'd be fools to start signing treaties to tone down on our mutual nuclear arsenals - because Russia is never going to follow the rules. They still act as if they're the Soviet Union - and their foreign and domestic policy suggest they want to return to those days.
- inactive, on 07/08/2009, -1/+8You new here?
- jcsoc, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7they fully disarmed, the only country have have nukes and then get rid of them all.
- maz2331, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7I'm pretty sure everyone would know of they were ever tested on the Palistinian general population. It's kind of difficult to hide an above-ground nuclear detonation and millions of dead people, plus several square miles of scorched earth.
- Benno, on 07/08/2009, -2/+9Good information but the circle graphics are meaningless due to the map projection.
- blackmesa, on 07/08/2009, -0/+6You know it's *almost* a shame we (Australia) were never more involved with the Cold War... I'd love for there to be an abundance of abandoned bunkers and missile silos for the private buyer or adventurer to explore! Our infrastructure in that regard can't hold a candle to the stuff scattered through Europe, Russia, the US etc.
- TheDougem, on 07/08/2009, -0/+6"One of the great laws of war is Never invade Russia" - Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
The Russian Winter has claimed many victims. -
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