WI Cold War Went Nuclear?

[Siege]

Are all japanese chicks that ugly?

[jimmy olsen]

Are all japanese chicks that ugly?

I think and hope that only the one on the left is a girl.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Are all japanese chicks that ugly?

I think that is a bad sampling.  And I'm not convinced that there are any chicks in that picture.

[Razgovory]

Why must it always be the 1980's?  It seems like when ever anyone wants to have a cold war hot scenario it's in the 1980's.  I mean the cold war covered 4 decades.

[DontSayBanana]

Indeed.

It seems to me that the period just prior to SALT is where it could most easily go nuclear, right around the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia: Johnson's approval rating is plummeting and the Tet Offensive has had catastrophic results. Democratic leaders urge President Johnson to shift focus away from Vietnam so that the party can run damage control and regain the election.

Units that would otherwise be devoted to Cambodian missions, particularly the 1st Air Cavalry Division, are set to withdraw, around May of 1968.

In August, misconstruing the USSR's statement about occupation of Czechoslovakia for an attempt to bolster force against the harried US, the withdrawing units are ordered redirected to Czechoslovakia to rout Warsaw Pact tank units and harry Soviet ground forces. At this point, the brand-spanking-new Brezhnev misconstrues the US action as an attempt to destabilize the USSR and orders the button pressed.

[Siege]

The funny thing about post-nuclear scenarios, is that everybody assumes they are going to be survivors.

[DontSayBanana]

The funny thing about post-nuclear scenarios, is that everybody assumes they are going to be survivors.

The funny thing is there would be, even among the participants in the nuclear scenario- there were survivors at Chernobyl.

[Siege]

Chernobyl wasn't a nuke, and definitively wasn't a broadside exchange with a foreign superpower that would certainly use more than one nuke.

[DontSayBanana]

Chernobyl wasn't a nuke, and definitively wasn't a broadside exchange with a foreign superpower that would certainly use more than one nuke.

Even in most midnight scenarios, the continental US was not blanketed with nukes; major population centers and nuclear reactors were considered the high-risk targets, so the decimation would be concentrated on the coasts, the Illinois/Michigan area, and the area surrounding NORAD.

[Razgovory]

The funny thing about post-nuclear scenarios, is that everybody assumes they are going to be survivors.

What is strange is the belief that states most states wouldn't survive it.  Or that the war would be over in a few hours.

[Syt]

Well, in Germany I had a big bulls eye painted onto my back thanks to the base/nuke storage in my town. And The WP planned 2 500kt nukes for Vienna in preparation of ground operations during the 60s/70s, so that reduces chances of survival, too.

[Razgovory]

Tactical nuclear weapon: Any nuclear weapon that happens to fall on Germany.

[Barrister]

The funny thing about post-nuclear scenarios, is that everybody assumes they are going to be survivors.

I grew up in the 1980s.  I remember as a child hearing a jet going overhead and wondering, for a split second, if it was a soviet missle heading to kill me.

Do you think it's a coincidence I'm living in the subarctic, in the least likely area I can imagine to be nuked and still work as a federal prosecutor as I can imagine?

[Alatriste]

Remember EMPs too. A nuclear war would mean more or less all of our modern hardware would be totally fried even in the deepest corner of the woods. Welcome to the Middle Age, lucky 1% that survives chaos, cold and starvation during the first year of 'peace'!

IIRC when GDW was designing Twilight 2000 and 2300 AD, the first drafts conceived an outcome in which the new superpowers were Argentina, Brasil, Nigeria, South Africa and Australia... then sale interests prevailed and the result veered towards a highly improbable evolution along neovictorian lines!

But we have never experienced a true nuclear war, and is futile especulating on the physical results (for starters, there are several alternatives... a major first strike trying to annihilate enemy ICBMs, a conventional war that goes nuclear, a limited nuclear exchange during a mainly conventional war, etc). I' more interested in other results: for example, the 30 Years Wars ushered a radical change in the way religion was understood and practiced in Europe and at least contributed to the Age of Reason; and one needs only to consider how naïve the happy, singing crowds of 1914 seem to us to understand how deep are the changes the 'Great War' caused. One would expect nuclear Armageddon to have an impact even more radical...

[Razgovory]

The funny thing about post-nuclear scenarios, is that everybody assumes they are going to be survivors.

I grew up in the 1980s.  I remember as a child hearing a jet going overhead and wondering, for a split second, if it was a soviet missle heading to kill me.

Do you think it's a coincidence I'm living in the subarctic, in the least likely area I can imagine to be nuked and still work as a federal prosecutor as I can imagine?

Early missile defense consisted of exploding nuclear bombs over Canada to destroy incoming warheads.