There was briefly a 3D version integrated with Google Earth that was even more depressing.
Also check out (by the same developer, Alex Wallerstein) MissileMap, where you can plant a launch platform on a map (sub, silo etc.), assign it a missile and a warhead, and see which parts of the earth you can turn to glass. Stiff drink helps; all a bit close to home for this cold war kid.
This is becoming potentially less true. Most of the deterrent was designed and built in the 70s and 80s based on the first strike threat models at that time. Since then, we've seen the development of, among other things:
1. The U.S. no longer maintains a command post on continuous airborne alert. There are two planes on 15 minute ground alert, but they are very vulnerable sitting on a limited set of alert facilities.
2. A couple of new submarine detection methods have gotten some development. Signal processing for sonar has improved.
3. Missile accuracy has improved, particularly in a first strike scenario where satellite navigation would be available.
4. Aerial drones have gotten much more sophisticated and compact, which could jeopardize silos, communications infrastructure, bombers on the ground, and the E-6s and E-4s.
5. Sea based drones have undergone extensive development and might become a serious threat to the submarine force.
6. Anti satellite weapons have advanced significantly, putting communications satellites to transmit launch orders at risk.
7. There has been more work on maneuvering reentry vehicles and hypersonics, which could enable depressed trajectory launches which, if they were accurate enough to destroy silos or the underground launch control facilities, could knock out the ICBMS with less than 10 minutes of warning, which is not enough to retaliate in time.
First-strike only works if you eradicate _all_ of the opponent's nuclear forces. Otherwise, you're left with a few extremely pissed off submarine Admirals / Captains with nuclear-retaliation abilities.
----------
Like, you're skipping a major step here. If you destroy comms and launch a nuclear first strike before the submarines are down, you're screwd.
You're basically saying you have confidence that some adversary can 100% detect all of someone else's submarines simultaneously, across the world, with high confidence. Sure, submarine detection has gotten better, but I'm not even sure if you can pinpoint all of the USA's __carriers__ (and near-carriers, like the Marine's Wasp Assault Ships) right now (let alone the USA's submarines).
--------
I have severe doubts that anyone in the world has enough satellites in the air for 100% ocean coverage. We don't even have enough satellites in the air for 100% ground coverage. The sea is a very large place.
If the technology you allege to exists really does exist, then the MH370 probably would have been found by now. But no: satellites don't fly over 100% of the sea, our computers aren't fast enough to scan everything our eyes-in-the-skys see even if we could scan 100% of the ocean.
Furthermore: Satellites are floating up there in the sky. I'm sure the military is just watching each-other's satellites and knowing when they pass by or not. If a Satellite can see you, you can see the Satellite. If you can see the Satellite, you can tell your Submarines where to hide.
I don't think cameldrv is saying that a first strike is really feasible right now. It's just that in the past, the second strike capability had layers upon layers to make 100% sure no war-hungry commander could delude themselves into thinking they had any chance of disabling it.
Now all of the 7 points have eaten away at this certainty. For now, it looks like the equation is still in favor of MAD, but it with a smaller margin. But what if Russia or China has some trick/secret weapon to disable the SLBMs? Or maybe they are just waiting until they know the locations of all carriers/subs - they have many years, and it might only take one random moment of 100% detection! I'm sure the odds are very low, but I'm not comfortable with a gamble when nuclear annihilation on the line.
The fact that the dominant military doctrine hinges on some increasingly uncertain calculations is terrifying to me.
> But what if Russia or China has some trick/secret weapon to disable the SLBMs?
Then do they have a secret / trick to disable all briefcase bombs? The Davy Crockett nuke is under 50lbs and was designed for infantry to use (in a almost certainly suicide manner). And then plenty of other types were invented as time went on.
If you can't get them with the big guns, you get them with the small ones, which are still devastating. There are still layers-upon-layers to ensure MAD, as far as I can tell.
And let me remind you: the pipebomb guy from Jan6th hasn't been found yet, despite modern surveillance methods and nearly a year of FBI searching and interviews.
Generally the smaller the bomb the easier it is to sneak it past defenses. You couldn't do enough damage for it to matter on a country scale. You'd have to sneak many small payloads by which would be easier to detect, at that point a larger single payload would be easier to sneak in.
Radioactive payloads are harder to sneak in as ports are scanned with geiger counters, easier to do pipe bombs or fertilizer bombs, etc, but less effective.
To do real collateral damage you have to deliver the payload via the air.
Off-topic nitpick, the pipe bombs were planted on Jan 5th near the DNC and RNC headquarters. There's no known relation to the Jan 6th capitol protest.
> To do real collateral damage you have to deliver the payload via the air.
-My pet scenario is you just use DHL and ship the thing in a container.
Imagine a handful of nukes going off in, say, the Suez canal, in a lock in the Panama canal, Shanghai, Singapore, LA and Rotterdam.
You don't need to kill billions to bring the world to a halt. We'd face shortages of pretty much everything for quite a long time, with all the difficulties, suffering and general havoc that would bring with it.
The weight delta between a man portable device like a Crockett and the expected load of a container is surely enough for a determined actor to shield and disguise the contents well enough to both appear as the normal stated cargo and shield the weapon's emissions from typical port of entry scanning.
A Davy Crockett may weigh only 50 lbs, but it only has a yield of 20 tons (not kilotons) All of the other super small nukes have small yields (less than 1kT). Besides the fact that they're all decommissioned, they just aren't big enough to the kind of damage people think of when they imagine a nuclear war.
They don't need to. "Our proprietary modelling of sea currents suggests this search area", which just happens to include the known location of the wreck.
Well, imagine if the Titanic was constantly on the move and much much smaller. And imagine if it used a nuclear reactor so that it left no debris (smoke or whatnot) behind.
And that's roughly the difficulty of finding a submarine. If anyone is seriously thinking that they can find all of an advanced nation's submarines and disabling them in a first-strike style attack... well... yeah. Its just not feasible with current technology.
At any given time, only about 3-4 SSBNs are out on patrol. The rest are in port or undergoing refits. Step one is to hit the ports, so you only have to worry about the 3-4 that are out. The subs patrol in defined patrol boxes which are roughly known to everyone.
Then you knock out the E-6s, E-4s, and all fixed VLF transmitters to remove VLF comms capability. Then you knock out, at minimum, the AEHF and Milstar satellites, but I've heard the SSBNs now can send up an Iridium buoy, which is good, that is a lot of satellites to take out. I don't know the feasibility of that. This buys some amount of time before a launch message can be received by the sub.
Now we would presume that before such a strike, the locations of the patrolling SSBNs are known. There are a number of new types of sensors such as green lasers, enhanced sonars, satellite wake detection, even antineutrino detection, about which some has come out in the open literature. There is also the emerging possibility of swarms of sonar equipped underwater drones that could aid in detection.
As for destroying the submarines, that could be any combination of attack submarines, underwater drones, aircraft with torpedoes, or aircraft with nuclear depth bombs.
It's also instructive to think about how a potential pause due to comms unavailability could affect deterrence as well, since an adversary could launch a first strike limited to military targets, and if the SSBNs were alive but out of communication, an adversary could threaten a follow up attack on cities if the remaining SSBNs did not surrender, and this would be an extremely difficult ultimatum to refuse.
> Then you knock out the E-6s, E-4s, and all fixed VLF transmitters to remove VLF comms capability
Okay, so... explain to me how Russia and/or China plans to to destroy an E-6 stationed in Nebraska before a second-strike is launched by the USA.
It takes something like 20 minutes for a missile traveling at Mach 20, launched in Russia, before it reaches Nebraska. And the whole world will know that an ICBM was launched because those things aren't exactly subtle.
And once you figure out how to kill the one in Nebraska, then you have to tell me how you kill the one in Kentucky. I guess you launch both missiles simultaneously, but... I'm sure you can see where this is going. You're gonna have to launch hundreds of ICBMs simultaneously, and then wait 20 minutes, and then hope the entirety of the USA's defense is caught sleeping on their job for 20 minutes.
With a quadcopter drone, a rifle from a helicopter, whatever. These planes are very fragile. You take out the windshield and it doesn't fly. They are much better protected up at 35,000 feet.
The other possibility is depressed trajectory SLBMs. Those could hit most targets in the U.S. in 7 minutes or less. The only problem is that the depressed trajectory means that the reentry vehicle spends more time in the atmosphere, so they're less accurate. With a maneuvering reentry vehicle, you can get better accuracy.
You're welcome to test that theory of yours by flying a quadcopter into your nearest air-force base and seeing if you can hit a grounded airplane.
Or at a minimum: think about the logistics behind such an attack. Even if you get one military base, there are hundreds of them across the USA, and you're suggesting that someone has the capability to attack all of them simultaneously.
No. The alert E-6s are normally at Travis AFB and NAS Patuxent River. There are two planes you have to take out.
Now, I have seen some evidence that this vulnerability is being more acknowledged and that they're moving around the alerts more. It's not a full roving alert because of course there are a limited number of crews, they have families, and there are not that many bases that have the working alert facilities that Pax River and Travis have.
I actually happened to be driving by a random air force base on a road trip recently and happened to see an E-4 taxiing for takeoff, which was interesting to me. They may be using those more to try to increase the alert coverage.
I saw some congressional testimony from 2019 about this issue, and the general was asked why they can't move back to continuous airborne alert like they did before '91, and the answer was that the E-6s are old and they don't have very many, and that they would only be able to do this for a couple of months before maintenance requirements precluded them from launching. Sitting on the ground puts less hours on the engines and airframes and so they can maintain that alert.
The biggest risk to the above is that with modern precision weapons a nuclear first strike to remove a nations nuclear retaliation capability. It's debatable whether a large and successful conventional first strike would trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike.
One concerning item with recent events is that no one can plausibly point to a nuclear "red line" in most of the existing flash points.
The historic red lines in the cold war were either one side reaching a first-strike position, or an unstoppable ground invasion in which both sides soldiers were directly involved and tactical nuclear weapons would usefully repel the invasion. Even then NATO troop deployments in Germany during the cold war reflect both a risk that this tipping point wouldn't trigger a nuclear war - as well as carefully calculated strategies to ensure that the risk of a nuclear escalation was high such as by stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Germany.
It's difficult to identify a similar red line in a likely conflict between any of the major nuclear powers.
This is why war in the pacific is a disturbingly realistic possibility. There's no plausible scenario under which such a war is existential for either side and so no plausible path to nuclear escalation. But this could lead to a very protracted conventional war we haven't seen in a long time.
I would find it more reassuring if there were more evidence that countries are rational where war is concerned. A recently-concluded twenty-year war to remove and reinstate the Taliban is not encouraging.
However big a failure that war may seem using it for extrapolation in this case is like predicting a person wouldn't take risk of bankruptcy seriously because they lost a quarter in the couch cushions without getting worked up about it.
It's not even comparable with the impact of a single nuke let alone nuclear war.
I understand economic impact is not the whole story, but the Japanese estimate of all economic losses due to the Hiroshima bombing was 884 million yen, about 1.2 trillion 2021 US dollars, by my calculations. The cost of the war in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is all of a piece, was about 2.3 trillion USD. One was a $1.2 trillion atrocity; the other is a $2.3 trillion atrocity.
On another note, while Japan has recovered very well — thrived, even — after the impact of two nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union never did fully recover from its Afghanistan debacle, which was part of the background for its eventual collapse. Don't underestimate the undesirability of nuclear attacks or disastrous wars that can neither be won nor gained from.
> I understand economic impact is not the whole story, but the Japanese estimate of all economic losses due to the Hiroshima bombing
The bomb dropped on hiroshima was more than an magnitude smaller than a standard bomb these days.
> was 884 million yen, about 1.2 trillion 2021 US dollars, by my calculations.
~884 million yen at the time but that's a relatively meaningless number. A better measure would be 2% of economic wealth of Japan at the time which is where I assume you came up with the second number... for a 20kt fission type bomb dropped in a city of 350,000. A modern bomb 10x the size dropped on a modern city 10x the size is going to be measured in the 10s of trillions in costs - instantly for a single bomb, not part of a 20 year funding campaign that ends up recirculating a lot of money in the military industrial complex.
> On another note, while Japan has recovered very well — thrived, even — after the impact of two nuclear weapons
2 weapons totaling the 10th of a normal weapon at a time no other country had a nuclear weapon to retaliate with.
> the Soviet Union never did fully recover from its Afghanistan debacle, which was part of the background for its eventual collapse. Don't underestimate the undesirability of nuclear attacks or disastrous wars that can neither be won nor gained from.
Sure, plenty of things compounded have led to the downfall of countries over the last few thousand years. I can't however think of any reason or even set of reasons that would be comparable to millions of citizens dying overnight due to instantaneous deletion of a major population center... x100.
I understand your earlier point of military wars not exactly being rational - but:
Is it really moving the goalposts to say that comparing the economic impact spread over decades isn't the same as one experienced relatively instantaneously?
Or the risk of retaliation from a nuclear power isn't comparable to guerilla warfare?
Moving goalposts or not, it just doesn't seem to be an apt comparison to gauge military rationality.
You’re the one who moved them the other direction by bringing up Hiroshima in relation to contemporary nuclear war where all weapons in play would be thermonuclear (and there would be more than two).
You also have to realize that NATO invested tremendous amount of time and capital into the recovery of Japan and Germany following WW2. They didn't want a repeat of WW1 where the damage done to the defeated nations created a festering resentment and yet another war 20 years later.
You're right that there were other factors at play. I'm just trying to point out that the two are not as incomparable to one another as they were being made out to be.
It's unfortunate that wars are so often initially fought over domestic concerns (usually as a distraction from them) which makes disastrous war more likely because the logic of the foreign situation is less salient.
It’s also a deterrent for actually getting involved and doing the right thing.
World powers can’t directly fight anymore so Russia takes chunks of Europe every so often. China does the same. Ukraine and Taiwan, for example, lose out. We pretend there is peace.
The current situation in Europe is telling : why bother with sending nukes on other countries when you can threaten them with "bombarding you with migrants" ? Or when you can retaliate by "freezing financial assets" ?
M.A.D. is a deterrent for total nuclear war. It's not a deterrent for war. One thaught "trade" would work, but it's still not perfect.
The Chinese are doing some very advanced philosophizing on the subject of Unrestricted Warfare[1]. It's a remarkably comprehensive view of national conflict, that reminds me of Clausewitz's famous maxim that "war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means".
It's an interesting thought experiment to ponder what exactly a nation-state's political objectives would have to be that a nuclear war would be the best way to accomplish them.
> why bother with sending nukes on other countries when you can threaten them with "bombarding you with migrants"
Which country is using "bombarding with migrants" as a deliberate tactic to undermine a rival country?
In contrast, I do agree with you that freezing assets is a real way to retaliate, and we've witnessed it in action. It has happened, and the relevant states have explained how and why it was a deliberate action.
Belarus is doing exactly that as a retaliation for EU criticism. It remains to be seen how impactful their state sponsored migrant program will be though.
Domination/Hegemony has been the only sense of peace historically. In that sense, I think that the continued stability of the United States as a prosperous and well-run democracy is very important for the world. It looks shaky though, and it's partly outside my control. What do I know, I'm in Europe. Europe is certainly not projecting any hegemony around.
Hah, I find it reassuring for the opposite reason - that most humans living in small towns and rural areas would survive a full nuclear exchange, though urban inhabitants like me would perish.
What I would like to see is a version of this combined with Google Earth VR, where you can stand in the street and watch as a bomb detonates at some distance and see what it would be like.
I believe it actually has that, it's just hidden under a number of menus. It's not exactly like Windy, as it doesn't have hour-by-hour feedback or fancy arrows, but it will show you a heatmap for nuclear fallout.
The classic Mac/Windows game DEFCON is still available on Steam. Its combination of vector graphics and an eerie soundtrack are still a good but sobering experience.
If it's any consolation, I got dragged into the principal's office for playing a Shockwave knockoff of Missile Command, not because I was goofing off but because the teacher thought I was disturbed for playing a game with weapons in it.
In retrospect, this didn't happen more than a year or so after Columbine so I kind of get the concern but the teacher was still being pretty ridiculous. I can only imagine what she would have thought if I used the Nuke Map back then!
Times have changed. My high school science class took a field trip to the local Civil Defense office where we received training as radiological monitors. A monitor's job was to advise the shelter manager what the radiation levels were and when it'd be safe to leave.
We had CD V-717 high-range meters for this, as they had a detachable ion chamber you could place outside. People inside the shelter would wear dosimeters (they looked like yellow cigar tubes) and we would record doses the wearer had been exposed to.
I suppose with my schooling in the 90s, I come somewhere between the two of you. Nuclear war was taken seriously. Came up many times. It could happen, it was a real threat, the history is important, and you ought to know why and how.
But it was also extremely abstract. My teachers talked about their memories in the 50s and 60s. Works about the bombings in Japan were in literature. Nothing tangible. It was pretty fatalistic too. It probably wasn't going to happen, and seems less likely to happpen. But if it did happen there wouldn't be much after. I do remember my science teacher wondering, as if aloud to himself, if the windows in the classroom would offer meaningful UV shielding before they melted.
It felt like it was in the immediate past, most of the time. In hindsight more of a cliffhanger than a resolution.
This is really cool, but what worries me more is smaller bombs, the kind that get lost on transit... I expect an explosive nuclear terrorist attack in my life time.
I read once that near the hypocenter, the death is so instant that you are vaporized faster than the sensation that you are being vaporized can travel to your brain. It is literally the most painless death possible.
I'm planning to move onto a sailing yacht next year and I do vaugely wonder what my odds would be in the event of a nuclear war. I think if you weren't near a major city and could get away in time they might be quite good - provided the fish aren't too contaminated and you can eventually evacuate somewhere in the southern hemisphere that's less affected. Modern yachts kitted out for offshore cruising with things like water makers and long range HF radios (presumably satellites will be lost in the war) sound fairly suitable for this task.
The greatest issue I can see is the wind, you want to optimise for speed but also not getting caught up in the fallout so you'd have to figure out your course very carefully. I suppose there'd be the issue of potentially being caught up in a naval war where nuclear weapons are used but even so the sea is a big place.
You’ll want to buy paper charts and learn how to use a sextant! You should be doing both of those things anyway as you can have your electronics knocked out by lightning, but if you’re running from nuclear war specifically you may not have access to GPS.
