Nuclear target?

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

Nuclear silos were in rural locations. Or it could be infrastructure like oil and gas. There are important sites all over the place that most of us never know about.

Sadly, I didn't have a list of silo locations in the US to compare to, but that makes complete sense...

[dilpickle]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Sadly, I didn't have a list of silo locations in the US to compare to, but that makes complete sense...

Silos were mostly in the north and west. You said Gulf Coast so that would suggest oil industry.

[Kawaii Koneko]

Really, this isn't something to worry about from a rational global player. Nuclear deterrence works and with economies so interwoven, major nations don't want conflict with other big players. It's bad for their economy and can have political repercussions.

 

[Tan3l6]

To be evaporated in milliseconds isn't the worst way to go. Just saying. Surviving a blast in a moderate destruction radius would be a bad fate though.

 

[tkitch]

https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-bomb-targets-cities-us-disaster-plan-2019-12

 

There's generally a list of priorities for nuclear targets.   

DC, NYC, and other HUGE population centers, and significant targets of military or infrastructure support are big targets.  The goal of a nuclear first strike is to disable your enemy to the point that they can't mount a reasonable retaliation.  

 

Most military bases aren't specifically targets at the very top of the list.  

[dalekphalm]

14 hours ago, tire said:

little grim, just wanted to know if Russia would nuke a city with over a million civilians, and kill them all, that's a war crime

You say this as if the Americans aren't also targeting major population centres too with their Nukes?

 

You can rest assured that if a global nuclear war ever happened, the Americans would kill millions of Russians (or Chinese - depends on who sides with who) in the exchange the same as Russia would.

 

A Nuclear War can definitely happen, but it's very unlikely given that ultimately even Putin doesn't want a nuclear war. Every side loses in a nuclear war. That's kind of the whole point of the nuclear shield - no government would risk the retaliation, and no government could possibly take out all nuclear launch facilities before retaliation (for example, American nuclear attack subs are positioned around Russia and other areas and would launch missiles that only have minutes before impact - Russia does the same thing around the US).

7 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Many many years ago, I got my hands on the 1980s designated targets for nuclear strikes by the (then) Soviet Union, against the US. I bought an atlas and started erasing parts of the US, based on the assumption every warhead hit the target.

Many of the targets were no surprise (Norfolk Naval Base for example) and some even came with biological strikes, but a handful of targets were out in BFE (towns with populations that measured in the hundreds) and I always wondered what was there that warranted a nuke...

Almost certainly nuclear silos or some other industrial source, like mines, oil refineries, etc.

[tire]

2 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

If this actually happened the fallout would probably end up killing most people on the planet. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Nuclear winter, not fallout, fallout can stop over time, but nuclear winter will last much longer

[dalekphalm]

14 minutes ago, tire said:

Nuclear winter, not fallout, fallout can stop over time, but nuclear winter will last much longer

In a global nuclear exchange, both will kill vast quantities of the world population.

 

Also both "can stop over time". A nuclear winter doesn't last forever.

 

Fallout will happen first, and will kill first. Nuclear winter comes in afterwards and will kill even more, including vegetation, which will lead to starvation of both people and animals.

[Middcore]

Very funny to me people actually spend time and energy worrying about this when there are a thousand things more likely to kill you every time you walk out your door (or even if you don't) that you also have no control over. It's like that episode of South Park where Tweek is freaked out about North Korea but in real life. How do you get up in the morning?

 

I went to college near Washington DC and my friends and I used to amuse ourselves with this website that allowed you to overlay the blast and fallout radius of different types of nukes on Google Maps to see if we would die instantly if the capital got hit or just after a couple of minutes.

[tire]

Surprised that this hasn’t been locked yet, good job

[tire]

8 hours ago, Middcore said:this website that allowed you to overlay the blast and fallout radius of different types of nukes on Google Maps

Been on it, used it, nukemaps 

[mariushm]

Don't think you have to worry about nuclear weapons, they're too crude.

 

covid killed around 575k people in US so far and made US spend way more money compared to cleaning up the location of a nuclear explosion.

[WereCatf]

9 hours ago, tire said:

Nuclear winter, not fallout, fallout can stop over time, but nuclear winter will last much longer

That's...not quite how it works. While, over time, the amount of fallout in the air would be reduced, it's not like all the fallout would just magically disappear once it was no longer in the air -- it'd be collected in the soil, wildlife and any vegetation. The fallout would still be a concern for hundreds or thousands of years, even after it was no longer airborne.

 

Some food for thought: I live in Finland, ie. right next to Russia, and I am actually old enough to have been a kid when Chernobyl went kaputt. I do well remember right after it was discovered when both the TV and the radio were constantly warning parents not to let kids play outside and to lock all doors and windows, so as to prevent any possible fallout from getting in until it was clear how far it'd reach into Finland and the rest of Europe and how much of it there would be. For a couple of days in my life, radioactive fallout was an actual, palpable threat.^*

 

^{*) The tangential personal connection added some extra spice to the absolutely fucking excellent HBO-show called "Chernobyl" -- I absolutely heartily recommend watching it.}

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

 

Some food for thought: I live in Finland, ie. right next to Russia, and I am actually old enough to have been a kid when Chernobyl went kaputt. I do well remember right after it was discovered when both the TV and the radio were constantly warning parents not to let kids play outside and to lock all doors and windows, so as to prevent any possible fallout from getting in until it was clear how far it'd reach into Finland and the rest of Europe and how much of it there would be. For a couple of days in my life, radioactive fallout was an actual, palpable threat instead of....well, your rather neurotic worries.

And we here in Romania still have iodine in salt (and it's actually quite hard to get salt without added iodine), and people are still careful not to buy milk and animal products  imported from Ukraine or countries close to that area.

We were lucky I guess, because the winds at that time carried the fallout in another direction and not much has fallen down in our country.