Guess the MegaTons of This Nuke

[Smitty-48]

Also bear in mind, every ship in the US Navy is a massive floating generator, all hardened against nuclear EMP, including 11 aircraft carriers and 75 submarines which are floating nuclear power plants, so the Navy could be used to jump start the country, from the coasts in, and via the Mississippi. And that's just the US Navy, every NATO and allied warship is a nuclear EMP hardened floating generator.

The whole US military is nuclear EMP hardened to fight World War Three, so pretty much every engine in the inventory is an EMP hardened generator, from armored vehicles to jets, so if non essential power is jettisoned, the Pentagon could keep the lights practically all on its own.

With non EMP hardened generators, so long as you have something to jump start it, you can bypass the electronics and just fire it up on analogue, so the US military jump start spreads rather rapidly, with a little American Know How.

[Speaker to Animals]

They'd certainly light up North Korea, but after that, most of our armed forces would rush home to try to pick up the pieces and restore government. America would be down.

If it's just limited to the United States and Canada, I think we'd rebuild in a fair amount of time with aid from Europe.

I think China would overrun most of East Asia. Russia would clean up on Eastern Europe too.

People would start pining for the old days pretty fast.

[Smitty-48]

I don't think the Russians and Chinese have the kind of power projection capabilities to overrun vast tracks of territory by force of arms just because the US military is not standing in the way, and the US military is not only military standing in their way by any means, they could nibble on the margins, but they don't got the horses to blitzkrieg the whole kibbutz.

Moreover, the US nuclear deterrent is not subject to EMP, so trying to jump the Eagle With Thunderbolts in Talons Grasped, when she was backs against a wall, would probably look like sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind to them, at that particular moment. No animal more dangerous, than a wounded animal backed into a corner.

[Speaker to Animals]

We'd still need their shit, though. So would you.

You'd be dancing for the Chinese bombers dropping rice pallets too.

[Smitty-48]

No I wouldn't, because the North Koreans are not going to launch an EMP attack, without a full scale endo-atmospheric nuclear strike, at which point I would be too dead from radiation poisoning to be hungry.

A dozen hydrogen bombs hurled at the CONUS, is rather likely to set the US nuclear deterrent off, worldwide, so if the North Korean bombs didn't get me, the Russian ones surely would.

[Speaker to Animals]

They don't need that many nuclear warheads, nor could they realistically manufacture that many.

EMP is the way to do it. It's far more effective than just lighting people up. The objective really isn't extermination. That's how westerners think. We exterminate threats completely. We have been doing it since the Persian wars.

Easterners don't think like us. It's actually a lot smarter to focus on EMP. Neither modalities is going to stop us from retaliating, but the Nork junta doesn't really give a shit about that either way.

[Smitty-48]

It's not hard for them to manufacture warheads, once they've got a proven design, these weapons are comparatively cheap compared to conventional weapons, just another reason why they are pursuing them, they're not going to stop at a dozen ICBMs, they're going to have a hundred or so before they're done.

And they're not going to launch a deliberate first strike, they'd only launch on false warning, at which point, they will launch everything, and if it devastates the CONUS, that will kick the American deterrent off, if not launch on warning, then at the very least survivable second strike from the Boomers, which will incite the Russians to retaliate launch on warning, at which point, game over any way you slice it.

If it comes to the brink, everybody is gonna be on a hair trigger, the Russians too, the SSBN's will have the CIP codes and will be in S3 mode at launch depth, first nuke to pop on over or around the CONUS, is going to set the whole tinderbox off in a cascading series of moves and counter moves which brings the whole house down.

The US could launch a counterforce right now, without inciting a total war, but if at any point in the future, the CONUS suffers a strategic nuclear attack, that's DEFCON One, which is going to kick World War Three off in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

The default position of the American deterrent, from the Cold War and to this day, is that if America gets hit with a devastating strategic nuclear attack, Ivan will pay for that, whether it was his fault or not. As Zbig said in 79'; "if we're going, those bastards are coming with us". If Moscow's little buddies in Pyongyang nuke Washington, Moscow is going too, no way America lets them get off lightly, if that shit ever goes down.

Again, just another reason why neither Beijing nor Moscow has any control over Pyongyang, because if they did, they would never let it get as far as it has gone even now, because they well know what happens to them, if the CONUS ever gets nuked.

[doc_loliday]

The default position of the American deterrent, from the Cold War and to this day, is that if America gets hit with a devastating strategic nuclear attack, Ivan will pay for that, whether it was his fault or not.

Why?

[Smitty-48]

The default position of the American deterrent, from the Cold War and to this day, is that if America gets hit with a devastating strategic nuclear attack, Ivan will pay for that, whether it was his fault or not.

Why?

Because ultimately, it's all Ivan's fault, who do you think made the North Koreans in the first place? Again, if Ivan's little proxy run amok in Pyongyang, gets to the point of nuking the CONUS, Ivan is the one who set that all in motion, and never did anything to stop it when he had the chance, and America is not going to let him get away with that, if Uncle Sam goes, Mr. Ivan goes too, no ifs ands nor buts about it.

Do you really think that the National Command Authority, is going to watch America burn in a nuclear fire, by the hand of Ivan's proxy, while Ivan just rides off into the sunset without paying the price? I mean, ca'mon. Perhaps the baby Jesus could forgive that, but the baby Jesus, ain't in the chain of command.

Hell, if the politicians won't make Ivan pay, pretty sure the Air Force and Navy will, if the CONUS goes down, the birds are gonna fly, one way or the other, no escape for Moscow and Beijing, they will not rule the world in America's wake, by that means, not a fuckin' chance.

[heydaralon]

Inflation adjusted, $600 billion in the 1980's is $2 trillion now, $600 billion now is only $200 billion in 1980;
$200 billion is 10% of $2 trillion.

What percentage of that was on Star Wars? Reagan gets a lot of praise or shit depending on who you ask for that. Was that project a monetary blackhole as is sometimes claimed?

SDI never really got past the seed funding for research stage before the Cold War came to an end, I think they peaked at a $6 billion dollar budget request in 1986, so that's like $2 billion in 2017 dollars, about the price of a single B-2 bomber.

The assertion that it was a "blackhole" was based on the argument that it wouldn't work and it would just force the Soviets to counter it with ever more massive overkill to overwhelm the defenses, then the Soviets went broke trying to do that, so Reagan gets credit for that.

The Soviets didn't really have a budget in American terms, but their spending in the 1980's was calculated to be equivalent to $128 billion USD/year, which was 50% of their GDP, so America was spending almost 6 times as much, at about 5% GDP, so the Soviets simply collapsed trying to keep up, hastened by the collapse of the oil price, as they were relying on oil exports to acquire US dollars in order to pay their bills.

When OPEC drove the oil price up, the Soviets were flush and so went on a massive spending spree, in which they rapidly closed the gap with America, but when the oil price came back down, they were caught in an economic bubble collapse.

Unlike North Korea, the Soviet Union was not such a deeply entrenched totalitarian system as to maintain its military efforts in the face of mass famine, North Korea of course, shaking that off in the 1990s like it ain't no thang.

In the end, the Soviet Union turned out to be a de facto democracy, because when the bread lines ran out of bread, they basically voted with their feet, whereas the North Koreans on the other hand, have demonstrated that they are resolved to commit mass suicide for Juche.

I had to look up Juche. I guess it translates to self-reliance. This does not usually work in Communist countries. Mao tried it (with some hypocrisy and sneaky trade deals) and he took it to the point where he was exporting grain owed to the USSR at the expense of tens of millions of his people starving. Not the only reason, but added gasoline to the forest fire. In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere tried the communal farm Ujaamaa project which was Stalin and Mao light (farmers being forcibly relocated etc) to create a self sufficient economy. I'm not sure how many people starved, but the west and the US ended up flying in shipments of grain to help the people if I remember correctly. This was especially ironic, because Nyerere was one of those African leaders that blamed the west for everything and empahsized the need to break ties. He certainly wasn't above taking aid when his harebrained scheme fucked his country up. Tbh, this kind of mentality in history makes me think that when people talk about "energy independence" they are chasing a mirage. Idk maybe its possible for the United States.