The Real Possibility of a Russian Nuclear Exchange

I don't expect people to understand the math behind Game Theory, but it would be nice if people understood the risks of intervening in Ukraine. At least in terms of what we knew during the Cold War.

I have been constantly infuriated by people and their complete lack of understanding of what we knew about nuclear war in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. But then most people seem to be getting information about a nuclear attack and the aftermath from a bad Brendan Fraser/Alicia Silverstone movie from the 1990s or from a video game. (Blast From The Past was a farcical comedy, not a documentary.) I'm not really happy with this post; I've written and rewritten it about 3 times, but I think if I worked on it for a month, I still wouldn't be happy. So

But then I don't know why I'm shocked that people in my life, or on social media, don't understand the risks of nuclear war. It is pretty clear that people in government also don't understand it. (Would you send Kamala Harris to defuse a dangerous situation?)

The greatest hubris I see in people around me, is assuming that the Russian military, Russian government, and Vladimir Putin in particular have the exact same understanding of nuclear war as they do. I hate to break it to you, but the Russians have NEVER had the same ideas about nuclear war as Americans. One example, not chosen at random, is that the Soviet Union built bomb and fallout shelters almost continuously from the 1950s onward. There was a brief hiatus after the fall of the Soviet Union, but then Russia started building them again in the late 1990s. Indeed, Putin recently sent his family to a fallout shelter in Siberia, well away from the cities.

Yes, they have the decaying shelter in the middle of Moscow that shows up on TV every once in a while. A bomb shelter at ground zero will not do you much good. A fallout shelter in the country is a different matter.

While most people were overstating the results of a single bomb, that could be fielded by the likes of North Korea, or Iran, or even a terrorist group, I'm not sure that people appreciate the threat posed by a nuclear war between the US and Russia.

So let's start with an Article from The Atlantic: This Is a Uniquely Perilous Moment

It points up the one thing that most Americans refuse to believe; Russia has always had plans to fight a nuclear war.

Moreover, there is considerable evidence that use of those tactical nuclear weapons is part of contemporary Russian-military planning. Russia has reportedly adopted a military strategy known as “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to terminate.”

In a March 2014 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nikolai N. Sokov, a former Soviet and then later Russian arms-control negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, described Russia’s current military doctrine as open to using tactical nuclear weapons to inflict “tailored damage,” which is defined as “damage [that is] subjectively unacceptable to the opponent [and] exceeds the benefits the aggressor expects to gain as a result of the use of military force.”

Tactical nuclear arms are not city killers, or ICBM launched, but are smaller, pin-point weapons delivered by bombers, cruise-missiles, or even artillery shells. Though I don't know that any of the atomic artillery is in service at this time, the US did develop such a weapon. The Davy Crockett was a weapon for delivering the W54 warhead with a yield of 20 tonnes of TNT.

And of course, the times being what they are, someone - maybe several someones - have been conducting polls on whether the US should intervene in Ukraine. And people are saying yes. I don't think they know what they are asking for.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted late last week, a startling 74 percent of Americans supported a no-fly zone over Ukraine, though it’s questionable whether respondents understood that imposing a no-fly zone would require direct military confrontation with Russian forces, and that direct military intervention—even a limited intervention—increases the possibility of a nuclear strike.

Because those 74 percent don't believe that Russia will go nuclear. Because of course Russian understanding of nuclear war exactly matches their own. How many of the 74% know that Putin sent his family to a fallout shelter far away from the cities? How many of the 74 percent have read the transcripts of Putin's speeches about nuclear war over the past 15 years or so? How many understand that Russia's (and Putin's) view of a nuclear war is very different from their own?

For the Atlantic article, the hat tip goes to to Tam at View from the Porch: The Strategic Problem of Tactical Nukes.

Interesting read on the nukyular problem potentially on the table...

Now let's move on to the next part of what we have forgotten from the Cold War.

 

There are a few "nuclear attack" simulators on the web, though one was recently taken offline. I hesitate to link them because even if you type in the current Russian heavy strategic warhead, I think people tend to underestimate the impact of a Russian strategic nuclear assault. And that is saying something.

A couple of years ago, I would have said that the biggest nuclear threat facing the US was either North Korea, or Iran, or a terrorist group. Under those conditions people tend to overstate what one or three nuclear weapons would accomplish. An all-out war with Russia is a different thing. Nuclear War Map: what would happen in a nuclear war?

What Happens When Los Angeles Gets Nuked?

It's hard to comprehend the brutal scale and destructiveness of a modern weapons. To help, let's look at some visualizations.

This image is one of those visualizations. The only one I think makes sense.

There are 2 simulators at that site, a massive attack, and an attack on a single city. I don't like either one, because the "massive attack" simulation goes on too long, and the single city simulation is really a "single warhead" simulation. Current Russian missiles contain between 10 and 15 warheads, depending on yield (they have 2 different warheads) and whether they have included any electronic countermeasures to deal with any missile defense systems in place. A single missile launch is probably going to hit 10 targets.

The image is from the massive attack simulator at the Nuclear War Map. While even in a major urban center like Los Angeles, not everyone would die in the original attack. Though when the secondary effects kick in that will change. Lack of food, and lack of water will set in pretty fast. Next, Americans complete lack of understanding of sanitation means that cholera and dysentery will set in fairly fast. It won't be pretty.

I almost can't recommend the following video. It is mostly accurate, though incomplete in some hair tearing ways. And it focuses on the North Korea/terrorist type of bomb. A single detonation of low yield in a city. It is also 20 minutes long, which is too long. It was created a few years ago after Hawaii had its fake nuclear attack message. That incident showed how much people today don't understand the lessons of the Cold War.

The video is How To Survive The First Hour Of A Nuclear Blast / Fallout! DEBUNKED

If there is a nuclear attack in your area, and you are not at ground zero, you have a chance to survive, if you don't act like an idiot. A better chance than you might believe. Whether or not you will survive in the long run is of course another issue, but if you do something stupid, that causes you to die of radiation poisoning in the first week after an attack, your long term survival odds are moot.

The video does mention Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who was on a business trip to Hiroshima in August of 1945. He survived the bomb - with burns - despite being only 3 kilometers away from ground zero. He then returned home to Nagasaki, just in time to survive that bomb as well. ("I'll leave it you to decide whether he is the luckiest or unluckiest man" of the 20th Century.)

This is where I would link to the simulators, or at least to one of them. But as I said, I don't care for them, and this post is too long already.